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CES: Windows Vista GroupShot (ITS FRIGGIN AWeSOME)

riccardo.raneri.it — Microsoft GroupShot enables you to combine multiple photos of the same scene and create a composite image, that eliminates or exchanges parts of the original photos with parts of a nearly identical shot from the same sequence. (Examples on Link)

Who dugg this? Made popular Jan 8, 2007

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  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -28/+108Of course, if this was an Apple program, you would be ejaculating into your palm over it.

    If you really don't see how this is useful, then you never do anything with pictures.
  • Zipp425, on 10/12/2007, -11/+66Wow. Simply amazing. Im sure that this is possible in Photoshop and other programs, but Microsoft really just made it so much easier.
  • CaffeineAddict, on 10/12/2007, -8/+44Yes, its possible in both Photoshop, Gimp, and MSpaint if you got some talent ... but this makes it look alot easier ... However, I have a feeling that there where some steps or flaws not documented here.

    Looks cool, but I will reserve my judgment until i personally test it

    EDIT: also, the photos here are kinda low rez
  • krolls, on 10/12/2007, -0/+27The average mom and dad don't know how to do this in photoshop.
  • krolls, on 10/12/2007, -3/+26Wow Microsoft actually beat Apple at bringing a rather complicated task that people can use to the masses. I dont often say this but- Good work Microsoft.
  • GawtMilk, on 10/12/2007, -8/+31Ray301 mentions this down the page, but this is definately something that everyone who reads this article should know. I'm abusing comment spam because the article is misleading -- you CAN DOWNLOAD THIS ON WINDOWS XP RIGHT NOW!

    http://research.microsoft.com/projects/GroupShot/

    Thanks Ray!

    @Zybch
    You cannot burst five seconds in a second. Plus, they'd be useless in this case - they'd be identicle photos.
  • GawtMilk, on 10/12/2007, -3/+24Well what did Apple do before Xerox that was user friendly? Guys I'm not being anti-Apple, I'm being logical. It is called the ***** human race. You cannot blame a company for expanding on other company's innovation. Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb. Does that mean every computer screen is a lame rip-off of Edison's work? The iPod will eventually have WiFi, Windows Vista has Gadgets. Who the ***** cares? It makes the experience better. Don't get bogged down on the details about "who made what first". It doesn't mean jack *****. The real question is "Who has what now". Right now, Vista's included app beats iPhoto.
  • drjekelmrhyde, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21and how much do photoshop caost while this is free with Vista
  • g3r4, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18The point is that microsoft made a more user friendly way to remove blemishes within photos, without having to purchase [or pirate] and learn to use photoshop.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19Dear ichle/itchly:

    If you have a message, post it as a story on digg. If people like it, it will get dugg up to the front page. Stop being a comment-spamming douchebag.

    Thanks,

    -SACSTATE
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+16I figured bono and steffi graf were mac users.
  • dpknc84, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13By logical deduction, I now believe you are on Apple's payroll. Can't people actually like things anymore without the fear of being on "someone's payroll".
  • GawtMilk, on 10/12/2007, -6/+17@yubpro

    Yet iChat's background-changing feature is the best thing since sliced bread?

    Have you *ever* taken a group photo? Someones always mucking ***** up. Sure, you can take two, but have you ever *been* in a group photo? You are standing there, looking at the camera, and the cameraman says "Wait, John had his mouth open", "Taylor, open your eyes", "Oh wait the flash didn't go off".
  • smarusich, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Ok, i've tried it. i'm not impressed. the two images need to be framed just about exactly the same, or your faces are gonna get torn in half. the alignment tools aren't good enough if there is even a slight change in depth or composition.

    i'm kinda bummed, i was hoping for more after seeing the examples.
  • dw2005, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Not sure why Windows Vista is in the title. The Program is made for XP.

    "System Requirements: Windows XP"
    http://research.microsoft.com/projects/GroupShot/
  • dw2005, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Um... Have you ever used Photostitch? It's for joining a series of photos together. Groupshot is for a completely different purpose.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11Group photos are a great use of it, but as I said before, another one would be for taking pictures of inanimate objects. Like say you want a nice picture of the Eiffel Tower or something. You want to get back far enough to get the whole thing, but you don't want other tourists, or whatever in the shot. Take afew pictures. Chances are if the tourists are in one area of one of hte picture,s they won't be in that area in the next. And out they come.

  • Ray301, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8you can download it here:
    http://research.microsoft.com/projects/GroupShot/
  • praisethelard, on 06/06/2008, -5/+12What do you mean it won't catch on anytime soon? I can finally swap my penis for a larger one!

    P.S. I think you can download it.

    ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/downloads/b215d477-9116-4708-a543-7ca498e6c2eb/GroupShotSetup.msi
  • dAbReAkA, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6http://riccardo.raneri.it/blog/eng/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/group_final.jpg

    zoom to her left eye..
  • thumbup, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Strange how it got very little claps, the entire CES got little reaction from the crowd, they even needed to be told when to clap sometimes.
  • GawtMilk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Apple didn't invent the GUI, they improved on Xerox's. You just proved my point in your epic quest to find gratification on Digg.
  • hmemcpy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Oooh. Porn picture faking tool :p
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -12/+17You CAN! My richo does this. It fills up the camera's own memory (not its slow SD card) by taking as many pics as fast as the image sensor allows until the memory is used up!
    I've been using this feature for a while now and manually switching bits from the photos around till I have a composite where nobody is blinking or looking the wrong way.

    Do a bit of research before spouting off at the ass!
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6And when does CS3 leave beta testing??
  • thomas, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Interesting program if you have a use for it but to call it "FRIGGIN AWeSOME" is probably a bit much.
  • zunipus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Creepy. Undead.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Wow...did you get banned on your other ID already? Don't worry, this one will get banned too.

    And again...I have to ask...is your life THAT worthless that spending hours spamming Digg when you know that ZERO people will go to your site and actually change their minds based on what you have there (becuase none of it is new, and ALL of it has been thoroughly discredited)?

    I mean...don't you ever want to kiss a girl? Make friends? Anything?

    You've been reported. Next up is the IP ban you know.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Photostich is phenomenal, however its made for a completely different task.
  • zunipus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Having actually /watched/ the CES presentation:
    [http://www.microsoft.com/ces/]
    I can tell you that GroupShot was presented as one reason to buy Vista Ultimate Edition. The point was the MS are going to release add-ons available free only to Ultimate Edition owners. There are two problems here:

    1) As has been pointed out, GroupShot is already available. It was disinformation for MS to infer that if one bought Ultimate Edition one could /only then/ obtain GroupShot.
    2) I saw artifacts in the resulting picture they created on stage. Specifically I saw a flattening of the left side of the face of the kid in the middle. Please note that this may entirely be due to problems with the WMV format that was used in the presentation stream. In any case, I want to look at a decent resolution print of a resulting picture.

    Question: Is stuff like this further fuel for the argument that both Apple and Microsoft have taken the concept of operating system too far? Should tools like this be left to 3rd party developers? Are both Apple and Microsoft damaging the ability of 3rd party companies to innovate and make money on equivalent software? Is future innovation in tools such as this likely to be less because it has been written into an operating system and therefore has no competition to push it forward?

    :-D
  • GawtMilk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I'm saying that it is okay if Edison didn't invent the lightbulb. He refined the filament and unified the mount -- that is great. He improved on a design making it better. How is that a bad thing? Coolidge then added the tungsten filament, which is still widely used. Why would you say "That ***** Edison, stealing other's work". He was an innovator, and that is what counts.
  • emblym, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5You guys can end his crap

    http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Digg_User_itchle_Admits_to_Spamming_Digg_As_if_a_confession_was_needed
  • GawtMilk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I have CS3. What feature allows you to draw bounding boxes, upon which Photoshop replaces features?

    *CS3 will retail for $600+
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It may have some flaws for shots of people unless they are very still, but it should work GREAT for landscapes, tourist attractions, etc. How many times o people take pictures of something and there are other people in the shot that they don't want. With this, you can take several shots of what you want, and then composite them together to remove the people.
  • MikeZila, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5iPhoto is for organizing large numbers of pictures, not doing "Photoshop"-esqe things to them.

    The two aren't even the same type of application, and still you try to draw Apple vs. Microsoft battlelines.
  • g3r4, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The final photo uses the background and woman from the first photo, and the man from the second. Not hard considering that they have a straight line in between them. But as you can see, it basically rips the left of the first photo, the right of the second photo, and tries to bring in elements where they would meet to make it match as well as possible. (The fanning bit of hair was actually from the OTHER picture as well as the top left of the man's hair [which sort of deforms his head, BTW]). Its easy to make, and I have very little doubts that a program could do this by itself.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5There is probably a LOT of things about programming that you can't imagine but that can be done. This just happens to be one of htem.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Vista : Windows :: Ubuntu : Linux ?
  • ScornForSega, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Yeah, 'cause MS's staged demos always go well.

    "Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all."
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3And when can you actually buy it in stores?? Not yet bub!
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3krolls..it is even more that you put it. This is not something that is hard for the "average person". To be seamless like this program appears to make it requires more than just working knowledge of Photoshop. And even with the level of knowledge needed it would take far longer than this program appears to take.

    But again...it is from Microsoft, so you have to fogrive the sad fanboys like Autotoxic for trying to make it look bad. They've dedicated their sorry lives to that task.
  • Eleo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5How is this possible? I can't imagine anyone being arsed to write the fuzzy logic for this. For some reason I am imagining that it looks great in this example but doesn't work so well in more difficult cases, but that's just me being cynical. If it works as well as it appears to work, then I have to say I'm very impressed.
  • jks52086, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7Does anyone know where exactly you can find this in Vista? I'm on the final release right now and I don't see it anywhere.
  • flip79, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hi, I'm Riccardo (the author of the blog linked from the article) :)
    LOL, I'm not trying to convince anyone to download a (free) app! I wrote this article just because I found this application interesting: people with no experience can merge several pictures and get good results without more complex softwares :)

    Oh, and thank to battlefield1985 for his segnalation on Digg and to everybody who dugged his link :)
  • 1bloke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I just made a composite from sample group shots...very easy to do and great results. TRY IT YOURSELF. Follow the link above from GawtMilk to download the program and use this sample image pack (from the same site, the 'Interactive Digital Photomontage' link):

    http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/photomontage/data/family.zip

    My only complaint was that at one point the little kid's head was slightly chopped off, but it was easy to undo my changes. Just keep your eyes on the composite image as you go.
  • louiedog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You've never been in a group photo where someone took a second or third to make sure it came out okay? I can't think of many where that didn't happen.

    I'm nowhere near close to a professional. Today I was taking some wildlife shots with my girlfriend's standard point and shoot. Animals don't like to sit still so I found myself taking many shots without moving the camera (from my hand, no tripod or anything). I was able to use this software to turn a group of a few birds into what looks like a large flock using three pictures that I took. I have a copy of photoshop, but it would have taken me much longer than the 90 seconds that was needed for this software, and that includes the learning curve because I'd never used it before.

    Why are so many people so critical of a free utility?
  • Yarnage, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Actually, I know people who were in the crowd and at times there were no claps because people were in awe (or, at least, a few people I know said that several people mentioned they were in awe by what they saw).

    Odd there wasn't as much clapping but it seems like the MS presentation went over very well.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4CS3 does it also.
  • Shenaniganz08, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2just downloaded and tried the program, its actually not bad, but it doesnt feather the edges much

    i combined 3 pictures of me and friends inside besheets, interestingly enought it picked up the different "bed sheet" instances
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