I enjoy taking photographs. I’m not that great, but enjoy capturing moments. Once taken I rarely modify, no histogram mods, contrasting adjustment, sharpness or cropping etc. Snap, store and sometimes share.

I do enjoy creating panorama’s using the wonderful hugin software. However this post is about photosynths which is similar. Photosynth is a Microsoft free service, tied in with their Windows live service and possibly windows only. It allows you to not be precise, your not worrying about height of adjoining images. Again snap, store and share. Basically you take as many photos of you want of an area. The software will then compare your images, sort and build a photosynth which is viewable online.

I’ve created different types of photosynths from moving forward in my footsteps so to speak along a beach walk I took, to simply moving around 360 degrees from a standing viewpoint. Sometimes I will take a handful of photos showing a specific area such as a ruin, whatever the whim of the moment.

So how does it work and how do you get started?

Photosynth uses Microsoft’s silverlight technology, which I believe is for Microsoft Windows only operating systems. I am unsure if there is an alternative for other operating systems. Microsoft supply a piece of software that you download and sign in with a windows live account after registering for the photosynth service. Give the synth a title, description, set the license type and add the photos. The processing is done on your machine and the results uploaded. They supply an extremely generous 20 gig of online space for your creations.

Now a few of my photosynths are not working on their service. Apparently I may of deleted them according to an error message… um no I didn’t! However it’s free, I’ve still got the original photos and if the online issue isn’t resolved, I can just recreate the photosynth.

Often the software fails to match all the photos and instead of 100% synth results, I might end up with 76%. That’s fine, I just should of taken more closely related photos, but regardless you don’t need 100% synth results to produce an okay photosynth. Remember not to take away from the enjoyment of the moment taking endless photos.

I’ve even started created photosynths from my mobile photo camera photos when the main camera isn’t with me. Just quickly take five or six photos. It gives a better impression to the viewer of an area, rather than viewing related photos individually. A great accompaniment to sharing standalone photos on flickr I feel.

This hasn’t stopped me creating and sharing panorama’s created with hugin. It’s just different, another creative way to share an experience.

You should check it out. http://photosynth.net/

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