I spent some time today playing with some of the newer photo tools available. I must say, I am surprised by how many tools are available for free. Some of the ones I played around with include:
- Microsofts Deep Zoom Composer (Sea Dragon / Silverlight)
- Microsoft Photosynth
- Microsoft ICE (Image Composition Editor)
- Adobe Lightroom 2 / Photoshop 4
Below you will find some of my initial thoughts and reactions to each of the tools / technologies. I will be following up with a post about each of these individually with more detail and an example.
Microsoft Deep Zoom Composer:
The deep zoom composer is a neat tool. It allows the easy creation of a some very cool images. It is capable of outputing / exporting two different ways. The first option is using Silverlight. The second using Seadragon Ajax. Both are nice, Silverlight option allows the export of the project to multiple files or a single file. The Seadragon option only allows exporting a single file. The multiple files is nice, it seems to produce better end user performance. I wonder if enough people have Silverlight installed.
Microsoft Photosynth:
This is a really cool and some groups have put together some very good examples. Though it is a lot of fun, I am failing to see a significant practical use for it (not that entertainment is not sufficient). A couple of the draw backs is it is a hosted service. Any photos you create synths with are publicly visible. That being said it would be fun if you had a group of people out for a shoot of a single area to use this to put together a comprehensive composite.
Microsoft Image Composition Editor:
This tool already has my attention. It is the first tool available with a 64-bit installation (also available 32-bit). This has been a treat, performance is noticably faster even from my Thinkpad W500. The application does an ok job of stitching photos, it had some trouble with the transitions between images and properly placing them, all in all, not bad for a free application.
Adobe Photoshop / Lightroom:
This is certainly not a free option, but at first glance it provided the best results. I am doing my Adobe Photoshop / Lightroom testing from an Intel Mac, not the same machine / operating system as the others. I have previously shared my thoughts on Lightroom, which I feel is a great photo management tool. Most of the powerful image manipulation and processing is done by Photoshop, though it seems to be a smooth transition to use both applications together.
I will start on a post for each of these tools show an example and my experience using each one. Stay tuned / check back.