 |
 |
|
|
Details at a glance
Photo application for creating composite images from a number of other shots that have flaws.
We clicked with
Killer feature - no other automated application does this so well, results can be reamrkably good, free!
Shots in the dark
No tiff output, selections limited to rectangles, annoying borders on composite images, Links
Microsoft Research
Group Shot |
 |
|
You know the feeling, you look through your great pictures and that one's great except Jonnie is pulling a face, this one is terrific but Susan blinked right when the shutter opened. People, and especially groups of them, are a problem. Wouldn't it be great if you could blend parts from one image into another? Of course you can do this - a late night session with Photoshop, the clone tool, the healing brush and a bit of creative blurring and you can get great results - at the cost of a great deal of effort. What you really need is some software that can do it all for you.
Free software from Microsoft
Microsoft Research Labs "collaborate with universities, submit paper for peer review, and partner with product groups". They do blue sky research into new computer technology. They play with stuff. One of their groups has a special interest in digital imaging and some of their projects are very interesting indeed. Their latest project is called "Group Shot" and it is an application that is specially designed to make your group pictures look fantastic. Take a head from one picture, a whole person from another and the rest of the group from a third and you can blend up a perfect composite. Best of all you don't need to know the dark arts of Photoshop - Group Shot will do it all for you.
The software
Group Shot is currently available for free
download from Microsoft Research. It runs on Windows XP only. The website doesn't explicitly say this, but it would be wise to treat this software as a "beta" test version - don't use it anywhere near your only copies of pictures (but then you wouldn't do that with any editor would you?).
It took 2 minutes to download, install and get up and running. The first step is to import some pictures. As a wedding photographer, I have plenty of group pictures and a lot of them don't see the light of day because of "issues" - like blinking. I loaded up 4 images of the same scene, picked elements from each and set it to work.
Results First impressions were not favourable. I picked 4 shots of a group of bridesmaids that were taken hand held in a dark church, I had moved the camera slightly between shots. Group Shot produced a composite but two of the girls looked like they had double shoulders. Overall I thought that I could have done a better job in Photoshop in about the same time.
Then I tried again. This time I just used two of the shots. Two minutes later I was looking at a rather nice composite. There were a couple of tell tales but it wasn't too bad. Then I exported a "high res" composite. Suddenly the tell tales vanished - I was looking at an extremely nice blend. Looking at the image at 100% I couldn't see the join. This is as good a job as I would do by hand but instead of it taking 20 minutes of careful brushing and cloning, it had taken 2 minutes and 10 mouse clicks.
Results seem to vary a lot depending on the initial source images but when it works - it works very nicely. The application allows you to start with many original images but seems to work best with just two. I've done a walk through of a composite image in the techniques section - you can see my start images, screen shots as I work in the application and the final output.
On the downside As a research project this is a very cool application. There are a couple of improvements I'd like to see before it makes it to a final release.
File formats - the application will read jpegs, tiffs and bmps but it will only write jpegs. For casual home users this will probably be acceptable but if you intend to do further editing on the composite image then it could really do with an option to save tiffs as well to preserve image quality.
Selection areas - you can use the mouse to draw a rectangle showing which parts of an image you want to include in the composite but that's it. It would be very nice to be able to use a lasso tool to mark out irregular areas.
Polish and stability - the app looks and feels like a beta release. I couldn't get the window to resize properly and in an hour or so of using it, it hung once and had to be terminated.
Black borders - the composite image is placed on a black background that is bigger than the source images. I would guess that this is to cope with source images that have different sizes but if you want a print ready file you will have to open it in another editor and crop the black border.
Manual - there isn't one. Obviously I wouldn't read it if there was one but I'd love to know what some of the menu options actually do. Should I set my Alpha Expansion to 1 iteration or 3 or none? What is an Alpha Expansion anyway?
Other features Once you get your head round the concept that you are building a composite image from a number of "imperfect" images you will realise there are other things you can do with this application. For example, you can use it to remove objects such as cars from the background. Just select the car on one shot and then choose the empty space where it used to be on another. The Microsoft site also suggest you can use the application for extended depth of field which would be great for macro shots - take several images focused at different depths and then use Group Shot to merge them selectively.
Would I use it? A qualified "probably". I use a Mac day in day out and if there was a Mac version of this application then I would certainly install it and probably use it now and again. As it is, I will leave it on the office PC and next time I hit an image where I need to build a composite I'll probably give it a go. If it had an option to save as tiff then I'd upgrade that "probably" to a "definitely".
 |
|
|
|
Features 
Performance
Value for Money 
Overall 
|
Very interesting piece of technology. Yes it has some rough edges but I don't know of anything else that currently does this so well - and you can't beat free! Even if you are skilled with Photoshop, it's worth trying Group Shot - if it works for your image it could save you half an hour. If it doesn't then you've only lost 5 minutes.
|
 |
Microsoft Research Group Shot
