Last spring we introduced the Photosynth app to the U.S. designed to let you capture and hare amazing panoramas of your favorite places. Since releasing the app, over 6 million people have downloaded it and we’ve been hearing amazing feedback from our users which range from professional photographers with DSLRs, avid photographers with point-and-shoots to novice photographers just getting started. Our favorite part has been enjoying the amazing panoramas from our users such as one from The Maldives, The Grand Canyon, or the Louvre. Since releasing the app, we’ve been listening to your suggestions and we’re excited to announce the newly updated app, available today in the Apple App store. In the latest version, we’ve made many performance optimizations specifically for users on iOS5, we’ve adding Twitter support to expand sharing functionality and we’re very excited to say that the app is now available globally. If you’ve taken panaroma’s – those seemingly endless super wide photos, you know how difficult they are to capture. One needs a tripod, the right cameras, the right software and a lot of time. Photosynth solves all of that and makes it easy for you to capture panoramic images of the people, places, and events that are important – or even just cool – to you. Not only can you make a panorama sweeping from left to right, but also up and down, enabling you to capture a full “sphere.”
With the Photosynth app, you can easily capture 360 degree views of Hawaiian skies and watch Photosynth do its job of stitching together the clouds of different shades and hues. Imagine how difficult it would be on a DSLR to line up the right edges of clouds and matching their exposure levels.
With Photosynth, you can:
· Capture Full-Sphere Panoramas: Look and capture in all directions more easily than what most of us can do with DSLRs and point-and-shoot cameras.
· View immediately: With fast On-Device Processing, you can see the final panorama in a few minutes, without requiring an internet connection or data plan. Very handy for those impromptu panoramas and immediate gratification that you captured the perfect shot.
· Save locally and on the cloud: Your panoramas saved on your phone can also be saved and viewed online at http://photosynth.net.
· Share immediately: Share your panorama immediately via Twitter, Facebook or Bing Maps.
· View in browser or app: Zoom, pan, and rotate your panorama in any direction through the Photosynth app or through the mobile browser.
Once you’ve created a panorama, the fun part is sharing it! Photosynth lets you share to Bing Maps or share it as an interactive experience or a simple image via Twitter and Facebook. You may even get lucky and be featured in the “Best of Bing Maps,” where we show off the best panoramas created using Photosynth.
Photosynth’s unique capture experience requires an iPhone 3GS, 4, or 4S, iPad 2, or iPod touch (4th generation). The Twitter sharing functionality is supported on iOS5 only. Download the updated app and show us what you’ve got, and share it with the world on Bing Maps, Facebook and Twitter! We like your view on the world.
Javier Delgado, Senior Program Manager, Bing Mobile
Santanu Basu, Senior Product Manager, Local and Mapping, Bing