Photosynth now 'cool enough' for iOS

It's funny how times change. In 2008 Microsoft released Photosynth for Windows, an impressive technology that allowed the stitching of several photos into one large panorama. Microsoft said at the time that they weren't "cool enough" to run on Mac OS. Well, I guess times have changed, and Apple has eaten Microsoft's lunch in smartphones and tablets, so now Photosynth is available for at least the iPhone.

The app was released today, and it's free, so I gave it a quick checkout in my neighborhood. You take an image, and then move the camera in any direction. The app continues capturing pictures, and when you are ready, it stitches them all together and saves the resulting panorama to your camera roll. It works pretty well, although it got a bit lost doing a 360 degree sweep. Also, Photosynth sometimes wanted to take a picture while I was still moving, and I saw some blurry results.

Still, the app looks promising, and it's nice to see Microsoft bring it to iOS. I think 360 Panorama from Occipital ($1.99) has a bit higher quality, but Photosynth is worth a look and provides pretty good results. Images can be saved to your iPhone, Facebook or Bing Maps. Hopefully Microsoft will stay with it and improve the software. Check the gallery for a couple of quick images I did. They are cropped to remove uneven edges and reduced in resolution and size for quick downloads.