AutoCollage: Summarize Your Adventures with a Click.

AutoCollage, an easy, novel framework for the automatic creation of representative collages from collections of photos, became available to the general public on Sept. 4 from Microsoft Research. Utilizing a collection of sophisticated technological techniques, AutoCollage is simple to use, produces attractive imagery, and, perhaps most important, is a whole lot of fun.

It works like this: AutoCollage—which works with either Windows Vista or Windows XP Service Pack 2 and above—cuts out interesting parts of photos and combines them together, following natural features as boundaries between images. The selected pieces are sized similarly and assembled into a pleasing whole.

Photo: V.Hilbert, Microsoft Student Partner presenting the Technical Sessions.

“The most significant feature that differentiates AutoCollage is that it offers exceptionally sophisticated blending technology for photographs, powered by state-of-the-art computer-vision techniques.” - Alisson Sol, Dev.Manager, Incubation and Tech Transfer Team.

The AutoCollage application, driven by the Microsoft Research Cambridge Incubation team, is a result of worldwide collaboration. Although much of the work was performed at Microsoft Research Cambridge—with the Computer Vision, Incubation and Tech Transfer, Computer-Mediated Living, and Constraint Reasoning groups at that lab all making contributions—Microsoft Research associates in Redmond and Beijing also played key roles.