Photosynth

by Microsoft Live Labs

C@CM Presentation
Team Members
Greg Yoon
Saki Koizumi
Mike Penrod
Hui Han Chin
Soojin Yoon

Introduction
Photosynth is an entirely new visual
medium developed by Microsoft Live
Labs.

Introduction
It analyzes a set of photos of a place
to discover similarities between the
photos and uses that data to
estimate where a photo was taken
and build a model of the subject.

Introduction
It then re-creates the
environment and uses that as a
canvas on which to display the
photos.

History of Photosynth
2006: Microsoft acquired small,
Seattle-area startup Seadragon

History of Photosynth
Seadragons was capable of delivering
a smooth experience browsing
massive quantities of visual
information over the Internet

History of Photosynth
2006: Groundbreaking research of
Noah Snavely (UW), Steve Seitz
(UW), and Richard Szeliski (Microsoft
Research), developed a prototype
called photo tourism, which form
the basis of the synther in
photosynth

History of Photosynth

History of Photosynth
November 9, 2006 : Microsoft released
a free tech preview version
August 6-20, 2007 : Microsoft teamed
up with NASA on allowing users to
preview its Photosynth technology
showing the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

History of Photosynth
August 20, 2008, Microsoft officially
released Photosynth to the public,
allowing users to upload their images
and generate their own Photosynth
models.

Key Technology
Feature Tracking
3D Transformation
Geo Registration

How do humans compare?

Feature Tracking
Algorithm of Choice:
Scale-space Invariant Feature
Transform by David G Lowe, (2000)
Most stable to affine transformation
Uses Difference of Gaussians to find
extrema across scale spaces as
interest points

Feature Tracking

Feature Tracking
Discover correspondence between
pictures

3D Transformation
Uses the Direct Linear Transformation
Algorithm, Richard Hartley and
Andrew Zisserman (2000)

Find the matrix H that describe

the perspective transformation

3D Transformation Scary
math

Geo Registration
Aligns the estimated position of the
pictures with a GPS map of the
location

Capabilities of photosynth
Walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any
angle
Zoom in or out of a photo
See where pictures were taken in relation to one
another
Smoothly change viewing angle between nearby
photos
Smoothly zoom in and out of high-resolution photos
Find similar photos to the one you're currently
viewing
Send pictures

Demonstration

http://photosynth.net/Default.aspx