PhotoSynth allows users to combine an array of photos of a single location into a navigable, three-dimensional image called a "synth" and upload it to Photosynth.net to share with the world. The technology, which originated in a Microsoft Research project, is an altogether new way of putting photographs together.
"The photo hasn't fundamentally changed since it went digital," says Alex Daley, group product manager for Live Labs, which incubated the PhotoSynth technology before its release. He describes PhotoSynth as a "creative medium similar to photo or video, but just a little bit different."
PhotoSynth requires photographers to think a little bit differently about how they take pictures of a scene. It won't combine photos unless they are "synthy," that is, unless they overlap one another so that they can be meshed together.
For now, PhotoSynth is a consumer product, but Microsoft sees potential for commercial uses as well. "If you think about the commerce scenarios, you have this ability to provide a generalized overview of that that you might not have been able to before," Daley says. Take, for example, the possibility of a real estate site with navigable virtual tours of houses. Synths can be made to allow users to navigate around corners and objects as well as view an image in a 360-degree round.