Photo app lets you swipe to view a scene from any angle

A wedding or party can spawn hundreds of photos of the event. How do you find one taken from a certain angle or viewpoint? At present, there is no easy way to pick out a specific perspective on the action ? you have to search through every shot.

CrowdCam, a smartphone app developed by computer vision researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, changes that. It measures the visual similarity between images of the event, then estimates the angle between the directions the camera was pointing in for all the images. In this way, it automatically creates a virtual array of photographs arranged according to the location from which they were taken. Users can swipe in the direction from which they want to see the action, and the system will show them the best matching photo. Having brought up a photo of the happy couple's first kiss at a wedding, for example, the user could just swipe to the left or right to circle around the scene.

The app also processes the images to keep the subject in the same position as the viewer swipes through the array. This smoothes the viewing experience, as the action doesn't jump around as much between photos. Photos can be uploaded from various devices for spatial sorting by a central server, with the results sent back to a smartphone or tablet, say, for users to navigate through them.

The work was presented by Ayd?n Arpa at the International Conference on 3D Vision in Seattle, Washington, at the end of June. The researchers say the app will "greatly enhance shared human experiences spanning from events as personal as parents watching their children's football game to highly publicised red carpet galas".

John Scott at the University of California, Berkeley, thinks that the work has a "clear overlap" with his own Rashomon project, which is used to create videos of events from different perspectives. "I can imagine some really interesting recreations of dramatic moments, like a game-winning field goal at a football game," he says.

Practical challenge

However, Scott also says that apps like CrowdCam or Rashomon face a practical challenge beside the obvious one of ensuring that all photos to be processed are taken at the same time.

"The app needs to generate enough visibility and user traction for people to want to upload or share their images to it," he says. "Users typically want to immediately share their images to their own networks ? Instagram, Twitter, Facebook ? for viewing by friends and family. It is difficult to penetrate this market solely on the basis of 'this is a cool way to create a multi-perspective view of something' ".

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