What you see above is "Gyeongbokgung (Gyeongbok Palace) is one of South Korea's finest national treasures. Originally built in 1394, it is the largest palace of the Joseon Dynasty." That's the information that Photosynth gives about this 'collection'. Essentially they combine a ton of photos together and match them based on their orientation. You're able to zoom in, and if you want further zoom, you just switch to a photo that's was taken closer in. You can navigate with the arrow keys, or use your mouse to click on an area to select an image from there.
Above is a shot taken at Grassi Lakes up in Canada. The same idea applies. Here I left the panel on the left open for you to see. You're able to see a bunch of information about the collection. At the moment it's just information that Microsoft has provided, but as the video explains, when this is really implemented, the idea is that the program would search out metadata from all of the photos that compose the shot. As Blaise Aguera explains in the video, this could take data from Flickr - compile all of the images, then include data about the site from tags and descriptions. Alternatively it would search the web for these images, then take the metadata from surrounding text.
This is actually my favorite implementation. Photosynth is able to be used to take us on a tour through Gary Faigin's art studio in Seattle. Enough pictures were taken that you can go on a fairly seamless tour, and since the focus is on the art, you're able to click on some really nice, clear images of the art itself. This seems like a perfect application that galleries, museums, etc. could put to good use.
Again, if you didn't watch the video, here is the link again - watch it.
Godspeed.
This posted tagged as: art, technology, techy tuesday
Recent posts tagged as techy tuesday:
