Microsofts Research's Interactive Visual Media Group has announced the release of Image Composite Editor 2.0. The software's latest update, taking advantage of the company's Photosynth technology, can seamlessly stitch together 'gigapixel images', create panoramas from video, and automatically fill in missing areas of photographs.
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Image Composite Editor 2.0 also includes new projection features, such as creating a 360-degree 'little world' panorama from your photographs. A complete redesign of the website and its interface allow ICE 2.0 to better communicate with its brother's software, Photosynth. Microsoft notes that these updates build on 'years of research' from the team in Redmond, Washington.
The software is available as a free download for Windows PCs in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Support has yet to be announced for Mac OS X.
Even if i got other complex softwares for the same task, i still love it. Their online viewer is very nice too. Thanks about the news, i just updated it ;)
Just as awesome and powerful as 1.4.4 was, but with new Auto-Complete capability (a very competent content aware auto-fill), and the new robust PSD output capability, this thing is great tool to add to your arsenal. Big thanks to the MSFT Research folks.
You are welcome, happy to hear that ICE is working well for you.
There are lots of ways that we could do a better job taking 8bit source material and generating 16bit/HDR output.
But the engine is >8bit, given 16bit images ICE will produce a 16bit result, given 32bit (HDR) sources ICE will produce a 32bit result. Every feature (including Auto-Complete) supports this.
Wow, thank you for that bit of information! I just confirmed that 16-bit source TIFFs in both the AdobeRGB and ProPhoto color spaces are indeed processed to generate 16-bit output in the respective color space.
My initial comment was based on my experience importing CR2 14-bit source files directly, which results in 8-bit output.
In any case, this is indeed a very powerful and serious photographic tool. You guys rock! This thing is a BEAST!
I've been using MS ICE for what seems like ten years now. It has always been a good piece of software. The new interface will take some getting used to, but glad to see the added functionality.
Mostly, I'm really happy that they added the shell extension back in (it had somehow gotten left out of the last version or two). The shell extension lets you select your images, right-click and select "stitch images" so you don't have to hunt down the program and start it up separately.
This new version appears to do its intended work very well, but...
Why does the program, like so many new Windows programs, have to LOOK like a Tinkertoy app running on a Windows phone? There's not a hint of the visual richness and dimensionality that Windows 7 on a REAL COMPUTER so easily provides. All we get is a dreary, gray, flat rectangle. Who declared total lack of esthetics (AKA the Win 8 experience) to be a good thing? Even the Start Menu icon is dull.
Why am I not presented with a drag-and-drop interface until AFTER I load up at least one file from the Windows Explorer interface? What's the point of that?
Why do we have to look at advertisements and panos made by other people every time the program is started?
These things might seem trivial on one level, but they truly diminish the value of what ought to be a visual showcase and something that's fun to use. Despite the functional enhancements, I'm actually considering going back to version 1.4.4.
+1 on the flat thing. I will never understand why flat and featureless Metro/Material design is now preferred over a richer 3D UI. So little for the eye to hang on to. Usually compounded by light grey 10-point text on an eye-watering expanse of shimmering white background (except DPR :) )
"The price is the same as it was in the previous versions that were not ugly and advertisement infested."
Noone forces you to use it. There are plenty of other pano stitcher apps. Granted, much slower and/or commercial (non-free) ones, unlike the superfast an free ICE...
"Noone forces you to use it. There are plenty of other pano stitcher apps."
Sounds like you haven't really read what I wrote.
1. I have happily used ICE for a long time, maybe even longer than you. Overall, it's a good product.
2. The latest version has nice enhancements but has become ugly (IMO) and advertisement infested, where the previous versions were not. I don't appreciate that.
3. Feedback on what people might feel Microsoft has done WRONG with this release should actually be welcomed by the developers, don't you think? Why shouldn't I provide that kind of feedback?
Sorry, I think we missed where you wrote the sentiments expressed in your #1 and #2 above (except the part about it being an ugly interface.. I can find that bit).
I have never been too found of the "3D"-buttons, flashy windows, thick borders, pulsating buttons, etc. I hate that type of blinking/3D-interfaces. Very much distracting from content. Massive visual overload - both for machines and humans.
I really like the Metro/Modern design philosophy, with a user interface, who does not stand in the way for the experience or productivity. Focus is on content; fonts, text, photos, etc, and not to hype it's own user interface.
Really very minimalistic and functional esthetic that I love, both as a design principal in general, as well as specifically in user interfaces.
Besides Metro/Modern I think that products such as Lightroom, Native Instruments Traktor and Ableton Live are other examples of such great user interfaces - which both looks and works great at the same time.
I am new to ICE, but I really like it. Handles large numbers of images extremely well and the ability to click through the different projections without restarting the process is brilliant. And the price is fantastic.
It was some years ago I let PTGui to ICE. Except for once I always got from ICE better results every time I checked against PTGui and Photoshop stitching.
This new version looks (yet more) amazing!
Installed. Now I am looking for the opportunity to make some real panoramics...
Hat's off to Microsoft for a nice free utility! Just what I needed - a bundled stitch program I still have from Canon is beneath contempt, and now I don't need Photoshop, which I was considering wasting $ on just to get decent panorama capability. It's Lightroom + this freebie for me, saves $ for lenses, etc.
Cool, hope it will update WPG (Windows Photo Gallery) too. It is one of the best free organizer around. WPG, Faststone together take care of most of need.
This is not disadvantage, use tiff. Programs exchange tiff formats (e.g. between Lightroom and various plugins). You must first develop raw, then stitch panoramas.
Drag and drop support has changed, so now my work flow is messed up. Newly modal interface a distinct step back from previous UI design. Still no user point placement=still won't stitch some images handled easily by other tools.
I've tested 4K video-based panos with 4k footage recorded by the Note4 (in other pano stitchers, driven by frames auto-grabbed at regular intervals). The non-controllable shutter speed made it completely useless - there was simply motion blur, no matter how slow I turned around.
That is, ICE will not be able to create a good-quality pano either if you don't shoot with at least 1/200-500s (that is, in strictly shutter priority mode) if you mean creating simple "turn around 360 degrees" pano videos.
"I just tried it on Note 3 4K and have excellent result for the first time. I set iso to fixed 800 to stimulate shutter speed. You know the triangle."
Thanks! Indeed I haven't tried manually upping the ISO to force the Note4 to use faster shutter speed. TOmorrow, when there's sufficient light outside, I'll repeat my tests.
Saddest part is that this software was designed for Linux, then was suppose to come as Open Source in future (in the past) but Microsoft made a offer that owners couldn't refuse....
And today one of the most helpful software to photographers is in hands of a mega corporation.
Yup, I'd too love a multiplatform release. However, I can live with having to start Parallels to stitch my panos because
1, I have only good experience with ICE (and I did very thoroughly compare it to the alternatives) for "simple", non-HDR, non-layered stitches. (For the latter, I prefer Hugin, despite the significantly lower speed.)
2, it's FREE, VERY fast (faster than any other major pano stitcher, incl. commercial ones) and uses little resources.
Are you certain you have your facts straight? ICE is not a 'real' product but a research project that has been at Microsoft for years. Yes, they package it as ICE, but chunks are also integrated into other projects as well. Here's the photo group - like I said, they've been around forever and we take many of their projects for granted now. http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/technology.htm
I'm the manager of the ICE project at Microsoft and I don't understand this comment. As @osu9400 points out, the technology behind ICE has a peer reviewed paper trail as long as your arm, all with Microsoft authors. The ICE code was lovingly crafted using the same keyboard I'm using to type this comment (in Microsoft building 99), or on keyboards within 10 paces of my office.
Against this background of continuing and accelerating innovation, my question is therefore why Photosynth came from Microsoft, and whether it could have been open source instead. To answer that question, it's helpful to understand how exactly Photosynth was created. Here is Microsoft's description of what happened:
Long time ago, before it was Microsofts code, ideas etc. It was demoed on Linux, the technology that Microsoft has build in the ICE. At that time it hit to many magazines with frames and videos of it running on Linux computer, raising hopes on many that it would be released some day, until Microsoft got it and started to develop own products.
ICE and the Photosynth referenced in this article are completely separate projects. ICE is a panorama maker that existed well before Photosynth. No code has ever come from Photosynth into ICE, although a lot of code did flow the other way. I stand by what I said - ICE code is MS tech - I should know I wrote it.
Oh, what a terrible crime it is to invest billions of dollars into advancing the technological frontiers and not to publish a software version for a "competing" niche desktop platform.
Fri13, just curious, how many percentages of your net income you give away to charity? Companies, as do people, have a legitimate and moral right to decide of how they use their resources and investments.
I am a happy Linux (server) user since 1997 and in general pro-OSS, but I do not ask others to give out more than I do.
Big thanks for MSFT Research folks, I tried ICE and it really rocks!
Tried it with a few panorama sets, including a Brenizer - stitch lines visible. On the other hand, Hugins did it perfectly but altered the brightness. Too bad because the MS product has a really great UI.
I found that playing with the stitch settings could achieve fewer lines then I ever could with Hugin, however, this might be a matter of case by case for certain pictures. It's great to have two super and free tools to throw at different challenging stitches.
Photosynth is a little different. ICE is a traditional, use your CPU to stitch photos in a panorama. Photosynth is much more complex. It takes photos from every plane and uses cloud processing to create a near immersive result.
"The stereographic projection has been used to map spherical panoramas. This results in effects known as a little planet (when the center of projection is the nadir) and a tube (when the center of projection is the zenith)" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereographic_projection
Just tried it, and it had no problems with a pan that Autopano Pro struggled with and never got right (despite all the manual points I added). And it was quick to render the final version (13275x4303 from 17 images).
Don't look now, but Microsoft has their 1990s (pre DoJ) mojo back. They kicked Ballmer out the door and Nadella is rolling. Office365 is a business game changer, Xbox is becoming a home automation hub, their health products are starting to come into their own -- including the healthband that I am wearing now, SKype/Lync are replacing phone systems in the workplace, Surface is now a billion dollar business, and Hololens and Windows10 look very exicting for 2015.
never heard of them, but that is funny. I'm the original Microsoft hater -- even ran OS/2 (yes OS/2) and Linux to prove my disdain. Thinking back, I even held on to Lotus SmartSuite and may Mac System 9 for way too long. Anyway, in my more mature years, I've realized that brand allegiance and/or hatred is stupid. I haven't swung completely to the dark side, but I do realize their new products are very well designed, useful and open. FYI: I'm a manager in corp IT where we love Office365 since it is replacing all kinds of old junk like servers in our datacenter, PBXs, etc
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