Photosynth Reborn In Microsoft Pix iOS Update
Near the beginning of the year, Microsoft announced the shut down of a service called Photosynth. That shut down came as something of a surprise, as it ended a 9 year run for Photosynth, which allowed users to turn their photos into 3D panoramas. Today, however, it's getting a new lease on life by way of a new update to Microsoft Pix on iOS.
Yes, Photosynth is making a comeback as a new feature in Microsoft Pix, and its doing so in rather unceremonious fashion. You'll find it listed near the end of the "What's New" section on the App Store listing for Microsoft Pix, though the return of Photosynth does get some love over on the Microsoft Blog.
As you can imagine, the implementation of Photosynth within Pix is similar to how it functioned in the now-discontinued app. The name of the game is capturing more than a traditional panorama, as Photosynth will allow you to pan and capture your image in all directions, rather just from side-to-side. The result is a final image that allows you to capture more of the scene you're looking at.
When Microsoft discontinued Photosynth back in February, it said that some of the Photosynth code would live on in other projects. Pix is apparently one of those products, and it seems like a decent fit for the app, as Microsoft said today that this version of Photosynth will benefit from Pix's auto-enhancement capabilities as well.
Photosynth isn't alone in its arrival to Pix today. Microsoft is also adding a new feature called Pix Comix, which will use machine learning to pick out the "most interesting frames" in a video and create a comic strip out of them. Once it does, you'll be able to add speech bubbles to your strip, turning it into a true-to-form comic.
So, it's a fairly big day for Microsoft Pix users, especially if you've been missing Photosynth since it went offline in February. These new features are being added to Microsoft Pix today, bringing it to version 1.3.2. You can find that update now over on the iOS App Store [download].