14 DAY TRIAL // At the Photokina fair in Cologne (Germany), Microsoft will unveil the latest photographic tool to come out its research laboratories. Microsoft Image Composite Editor is designed as an panoramic image stitcher and is already available as a free download. Microsoft Research's Matt Uyttendaele referred to the tool as the best image stitching application delivered to date by the Redmond giant. This even if the underlying infrastructure is not exactly an item of novelty. In fact, Windows Live Photo Gallery and Deep Zoom Composer already feature the technology delivered by the Interactive Visual Media Group.
“ICE is the Image Composite Editor and it’s an advanced panoramic image stitcher. You shoot a set of overlapping photographs of a scene from a single location, and Image Composite Editor creates a high-resolution panorama incorporating all your images at full resolution. Then you can save your stitched panorama in a wide variety of formats, from common formats like JPEG and TIFF to multi-resolution tiled formats like HD View and Silverlight Deep Zoom. Here’s your chance to create stunning 360° panoramas and impressive sceneries,” revealed Microsoft Evangelist Miel Van Opstal.
The tool brings what Microsoft referred to as state-of-the-art stitching algorithms. In this context, the stitching process, although automatic, still permits the user to intervene and correct the result. Microsoft Research has in fact included an adjustment tool into the Image Composite Editor set up to permit users to adjust the direction and the type of the projection.
“This application adds the following features: a GPU accelerated orientation adjustment tool; [but also] 360 blending support; our fast poison blend technique now creates a seamless 360 blend; output to Photoshop layers; create an HD View web page; create a Silverlight Deep Zoom web page, including new 360 support in our Silverlight application; integration with both the Windows Shell and the next version of Windows Live Photo Gallery, so that you can quickly launch a new stitching project,” Uyttendaele stated.
Microsoft Image Composite Editor is available for download here.