This is just awesome I tell you. Straight from TED, Live Labs guys demonstrates the power of modern computing. Two of the products introduced here is Seadragon and Photosynth, take a look at the video at the bottom, pause first and let it load finish!
I like idea that they took all the pictures of Notre Dame Cathedral and just construct a whole 3D view just like that. And what’s more, they actually use Flickr!
Photosynth combines hundreds or thousands of regular digital photos of a scene to present a detailed 3D model, giving viewers the sensation of smoothly gliding around the scene from every angle. The scene can be constructed regardless of whether the photos are from a single or multiple sources. Itâ??s like a hybrid of a slide show and a gaming experience that lets the viewer zoom in to see greater detail or zoom out for a more expansive view. By viewing the photos in a 3D context you are able to get a better sense for the place where they were captured.
In this video, a user demonstrates how deceptive images could possibly be by making a fat women thin! The butt still looks kinda strange, it’s a great effort nevertheless.
While we’re all working hard with lighting and Photoshop to improve our photographs, Microsoft Research came out with an interesting method called ‘hallucination’. Having a problem with those over-expose portions of the image? Not much of a worry now.
We introduce high dynamic range image hallucination for adding high dynamic range details to the over-exposed and under-exposed regions of a low dynamic range image. Our method is based on a simple assumption: there exist high quality patches in the image with similar textures as the regions that are over or under exposed. Hence, we can add high dynamic range details to a region by simply transferring texture details from another patch that may be under different illumination levels.
I think it’s great for a lazy person such as myself. I don’t usually prepare my shots and just press on the button to snap and snap. I get horrible pictures sometimes and I find my Photoshop skills get better as I take more and more photographs. Using Photoshop takes too long unfortunately and it’s probably not really worth it.
# Man looking at another man’s private area.
# Plump father taking care of baby.
# Cheer for your colleagues, ‘cos it works.
# Women leaving their cameras on the table; you never know what others may do with them.
I just uploaded some pictures in my Flickr account. I haven’t uploaded a single picture since I last signed up back in October last year.
_(Screenshot of my profile in Flickr.)_
Flickr says I’m male and pretty much has nothing to say about me already. My profile page looks kinda silly so I probably be adding some more information about yourself.
I thought of adding after I played around with the Spell with Flickr tool this morning. So I just started populating my photos only today.
Does anyone here have Flickr accounts? Do add me through my profile page okay? I only have 2 friends and it looks pathetic.
Anyway, you can view the photos I take in the photo gallery.
My Flickr’s very Singaporean, most of the pictures I took are of buildings and roads so you can take a look if you’re interested.
Konica Minolta exits camera business – film and digital
Konica Minolta today stunned the industry by announcing that it will be exiting the camera business. Unlike Nikon, which announced just a week ago that they were exiting most of the camera market, Konica’s exit is complete. The company will withdraw from both film and digital camera market. In addition, Konica will also exit the camera film business. Sony will acquire Konica’s camera technology and will also provide service and support to existing customers.
Konica Minolta said that it will now focus on their traditional and most profitible business of high-end copiers and fax machines. Analysts reacted in a postive way to the announcement: “Withdrawing from the camera and photo-processing businesses is positive as it allows the company to better focus resources on office equipment,” said Nobuhito Owaki, a Nomura Securities analyst in a conversation with Bloomberg.
