Microsoft Photosynth review: in pictures

Microsoft Photosynth is a technology that automatically stitches together digital photos. The company recently made Photosynth easier to use and open to all.

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What's Microsoft Photosynth?

Developed by Live Labs - Microsoft's applied research arm - Photosynth automatically stitches together digital photographs to create a somewhat abstract but high-resolution three-dimensional re-creation (dubbed a synth) for the world to explore. And though ready-made examples have been previewable for several months now, Photosynth.net has finally thrown its doors open for everyone to upload up to 20GB of photos.

The 3D photo reconstructions suggest an improbable three-way love child of a David Hockney collage, Apple's QuickTime VR, and Microsoft Research's excellent WorldWide Telescope. But it's one of the more mind-blowing things to appear since Google Earth.

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Microsoft Photosynth is an exciting tool with some genuinely interesting applications and features. Best of all, the pace of change we've already seen, and the depth of ambition claimed by the development team suggests that Photosynth has a lot of potential.

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  Photosynth for iPhone and iPad

  Photosynth for iPhone is an interactive panorama capture and stitching tool that facilitates easy sharing. Read our review to find out more.

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  ArcSoft Panorama Maker 5 Pro

  ArcSoft Panorama Maker 5 Pro makes the photo-stitching process quite simple, with its auto-stitching, which works with both still images and video. However, the software lacks the tools to fix things when the auto-stitch doesn't quite work.

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  Apple iPad mini

  Apple has finally made its move into the smaller tablet market with the iPad mini. The iPad mini has a 7.9-inch screen and many, but not all, of the features that the 9.7-inch iPad has. Read our iPad mini review to find out more. UPDATED: 27th February 2013

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  Microsoft Photo Story 3

  The free Microsoft Photo Story lets you create multimedia "stories" from your photographs that you can play back and narrate.

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  Kodak EasyShare M853 8Mp compact camera

  Point-and-shoot simplicity is the hallmark of most of the Kodak digital cameras we've reviewed, and the Kodak EasyShare M853 is no exception. This small, light, 8.2Mp camera offers few exposure controls, but it has a wealth of built-in help information and 19 scene modes.