AutoCollage
Summarize Your Adventures with a Click
You’ve got photos—lots and lots of photos. Everybody does these days, thanks to the digital-photography revolution. Hundreds, thousands, a veritable treasure trove of image-based memories.
Sometimes, though, you don’t need thousands of photos. Sometimes, you just need that one representative shot to convey the fun you had during your day at the beach. But which one? The kids frolicking in their new swimsuits? The adults soaking in some rays? Your family’s nonpareil sandcastle? To tell the story adequately, no single one will suffice. You need them all combined into a defining composite.
Microsoft Research Cambridge is at your service.
AutoCollage, an easy, novel framework for the automatic creation of representative collages from collections of photos, became available to the general public on Sept. 4. Utilizing a collection of sophisticated technological techniques, AutoCollage is simple to use, produces attractive imagery, and, perhaps most important, is a whole lot of fun.
A free, 30-day trial version of the software is available worldwide, and a full, unrestricted version can be purchased in the United States and the United Kingdom. AutoCollage is one of the first Microsoft Research products to be made available to consumers.
It works like this: AutoCollage—which works with either Windows Vista or Windows XP Service Pack 2 and above—cuts out interesting parts of photos and combines them together, following natural features as boundaries between images. The selected pieces are sized similarly and assembled into a pleasing whole.
The application is a direct result of months of incubation efforts at Microsoft Research Cambridge.
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