Microsoft is adding a boatload of new features to its Windows Live Essentials suite of free applications (for Windows users), and one of the features to appear in Windows Live Photo Gallery caught our eye. It’s called Photo Fuse, and what it does is take a number of similar photographs and allow you to choose the best parts of each one to include in the final photo.
For example, if you take a number of group shots, you can combine only the faces that are smiling and not blinking. What’s more, the resulting photograph is quite seamless, and reminds us of the Content Aware Fill feature of Photoshop CS5.
TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington had a chance to sit down with Brian Hall (GM at Microsoft), and recorded the following demonstration of the technology:
Keep your eyes peeled — the new features won’t be appearing in the suite for another few weeks. Now if only Microsoft would include a Content Aware Fill-type feature as well…
One of the biggest stories last month was that an upcoming episode of the popular TV series House was filmed entirely with the Canon 5D Mark II. I know a lot of you are looking forward to seeing how it turned out, but now you can get a sneak peek: Fox has uploaded a short teaser of the episode to YouTube. It’s not HD, but it’s a pretty neat glimpse into what they were able to do:
Last week we reported that one of Nokia’s top execs made the prediction that cameraphones would soon make DSLRs obsolete, and that HD-video recording would be coming to mobile phones in the next 12 months. This video shows off the HD-video capabilities of the upcoming Nokia N8, captured at 720p. While we still don’t think cameraphones will win over DSLR users, this is pretty amazing footage, considering it was captured on a cell phone.
Tom Hogarty, the Lightroom product manager over at Adobe, has posted a sneak peek at the automatic lens correction technology that will be included in Lightroom 3 and Adobe Camera Raw 6 (included in CS5).
Using profiles for lenses that are either included or added by the user, the feature can automatically correct the distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting characteristics of particular lenses, helping you to “normalize” how your work looks across your various lenses.
With the introduction of killer new noise reduction, demosaicing algorithms, and sharpening plus sophisticated lens correction, the Lightroom/Camera Raw duo put even more distance between themselves and the competition, and I’d expect them to keep mopping the floor with Aperture among pro photographers.
As you can see from this quote and from recent events, Adobe and Apple absolutely love each other.
Here’s a pretty interesting sneak peek video showing you the lens correction technology in action:
In addition to Content Aware Fill, Puppet Warp is another powerful feature to be included in Adobe’s upcoming Photoshop CS5.
In this demo, it’s used on a layer containing a wooden mannequin, allowing the limbs to be manipulated as you would be able to do in real life prior to photographing it. The feature is then applied to rope, digitally tying it into a knot, and finally to fix distortion in a multi-photo panorama.
While this feature isn’t as mind-boggling as Content Aware Fill, it’s definitely something those of you excited about CS5 can look forward to.
Adobe is working on a new feature for Photoshop called “Content Aware Fill”, and posted a mind-boggling demonstration of it on YouTube. The description states:
One of the biggest requests we get of Photoshop is to make adding, removing, moving or repairing items faster and more seamless. From retouching to completely reimagining an image, heres an early glimpse of what could happen in the future when you press the delete key.
Basically it allows you to alter or create reality in photographs as easily as selecting an area and running the feature. Gone will be the days when photojournalists are caught with embarrassing patterns created by improperly using the stamp tool. The demonstration is so amazing that many commenters are saying it’s fake, going as far as to say it looks… “photoshopped”?
What do you think of this feature and the sneak peek? Is it too good to be true, or will it change the way we think about photography forever?
