Seadragon & Photosynth

                     

The aim of Seadragon is nothing less than to change the way we use screens, from wall-sized displays all the way down to cell phones, so that graphics and photos are smoothly browsed, regardless of the amount of data or the bandwidth of the network. You can get Seadragon Deep Zoom functionality by using Photosynth, which not only allows you to get super-close-ups of your pictures but also stitches them together into a 3-D space. You can use Seadragon Ajax and embed a simple viewer into your own web sites or blog posts. Or, you can also download the Deep Zoom Composer to embed a viewer into your own web site or blog post. Check it out here.

With Photosynth you can share or relive a vacation destination or explore a distant museum or landmark. With nothing more than a digital camera and some inspiration, you can use Photosynth to transform regular digital photos into a three-dimensional, 360-degree experience. Anybody who sees your synth is put right in your shoes, sharing in your experience, with detail, clarity and scope impossible to achieve in conventional photos or videos.

Synths constitute an entirely new visual medium. Photosynth analyzes each photo for similarities to the others, and uses that data to build a model of where the photos were taken. It then re-creates the environment and uses that as a canvas on which to display the photos. Try it here.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas (Microsoft) leads a dazzling demo of Seadragon and Photosynth, software that could transform the way we look at digital images. Seadragon lets you zoom and browse images and photos, whereas, using still photos from the Web, Photosynth builds breathtaking dreamscapes and lets us navigate them.