Note to Mac OS X readers: none of the IFRAME embeds in this post work at this time with the Mac. Sorry about that, Photosynth is a Windows-only thing at the moment although they say they are hard at work on a Mac version.

Note to Windows users: If you have trouble viewing any of the IFRAME embeds, just visit my Photosynth page to see all the synths. Update 6:59pm PST: I just removed all the IFRAME embeds, they weren’t working right and just screwing up display of text in the browser.

Day #1

As probably heard already, getting into Microsoft’s new Photosynth picture service on launch day was difficult. Saw too much of this:

 

I wasn’t going to let scaling woes deter me, I kept checking back throughout the day trying to get through the process.

Day #2 - First synth: 72% synthy

I finally got in and tried putting together my very first Photosynth of the Rockin’ The Rivers concert we attended recently in Montana feature Dennis De Young and the music of Styx as well as Manny Charlton playing with Nazareth. This is the largest annual rock concert in Montana:

Process seemed to go ok until about 85% of the way through where it just froze up and stared back at me like this:

At Get Satisfaction, a service for tracking customer service issues, I found numerous people complaining about the stopped during publishing phase issue.

Came back a couple hours later and my Photosynth was showing as ‘72% synthy.’ I’m embedding below using IFRAME which if you’re reading via RSS you might have to click over to this page too see and — a big, big sorry to all Mac OS X reader — readers on Macs can’t see the finished synths If the IFRAME is hosed you can see the synth directly here

Day #3 - more synths created and synth experimentation

Tried creating my second synth of the Pierce County Foothills trail which is near our office. I had 25 pictures for this collection. This was my first time where the process worked all the way through. My second synth only scored 10% synthy. Not very good. I almost deleted this synth since it only seemed to have used 2 of the 25 pictures.

Tip: use the SPACEBAR to get through all the photos. Here is the IFRAME embed of my 2nd synth (If the IFRAME is hosed you can see the synth directly here):

The difference between the two synths is the similarity between the pictures. Through trial and error I learned that pictures that were more similar were more synthy. So if I had started with one picture and then just moved and took more pictures.

I did the following planning for my third synth, starting at the edge of a road and walking toward a wooded trail:

• total of 105 pictures, my biggest synth attempt yet (nearly 250 MB worth of photos)
• every 10 steps I snapped a picture from about the same perspective and view
• every 100-200 steps I would alter the vertical level of the photo
• at scenic intersection I panned the camera left and right at about the same vertical position
• at the end of the road, where it turned into a trail, I took several shots so photosynth would (hopefully) detect I was still on the same path, only there was no more road straight ahead, I was not going into a wooded area
• at the end of the trail, I took a panaromic set of pictures from my position that led back to the road I’d just walked as well as to the river that blocked my path in front of me
• I took no close-up shots

Now how did this turn out? Same as my very first attempt: it froze up about 85% done at the "publishing synth" phase. I decided to pare back the number of photos with synth #4 attempt and only do the attempted panaromic pictures I took at the end of the wooded trail, which numbered about 25 in all.

This one finished at 55% synthy and wasn’t quite what I expected. It feels a little bit like you are walking through the trail. The panorama portion is broken. IFRAME embed:

At this point, I decided seek out how to make something closer to 100% synthy. While doing that I went to work on synth #5 attempt by taking a bunch of pictures around my desk. In this picture I:

• took more pictures of the same things with very small variations
• pictures were taken at different zoom levels
• I panned more up and down with pictures

This resulted in being 89% synthy, my best effort, IFRAME embed below:

This turned out to be the best created synth out of the 5 so far (only 4 of which have shown up). Use the + and - to zoom in and out and see different things around the desk. You can even see this very blog post in draft mode on my monitor in portrait mode inside Windows Live Writer. This might be a good way to start out with your first synth creation. Just take pictures around your desk or some other common area in your office.

While writing the last paragraph I got another idea for a new synth. I decided to make a synth using my Gibson Les Paul Studio red wine guitar and allowing viewers to stroll up the neck of the guitar. Sort of a synth journey of navigating the fretboard while playing a smoking guitar solo.

Turned out to be 0% synthy. Guess I’ll have to refine this idea and/or take better pictures. The results of this guitar experience swayed me from a 6th and final synth attempt for this blog post. I was going to take the screenshots I made — most of which weren’t used — in this post and combine them into a synth. Since my guitar one was a bust, I figured the screenshot one would be too, so forgive me bailing on the title idea.

Decided to leave the title alone because it describes the thought process one goes through when creating synths. Whenever I pick up the camera now, I’m thinking about synths. That to me spells a great way to start a new service. Features I’d like to see added — and forgive me for calling out the social card — the ability to add friends synths, create folders of favorite synths and more. Sure, there are a zillion bookmark tools out there, but it would be very cool to have these functions built in. How about a Stumble-upon like synth exploration feature?

I could go on and on. Yes, this is a FUN service, even though it’s getting pounded and off to a rough technical start and doesn’t work on a Mac yet. Photogs are going to love this. Most fun I’ve had checking out a new online service in awhile.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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