Photosynth Photography Guide
Creating the best synth starts with the right photos. This guide will help you understand how to take photos that Photosynth can use to best advantage. Reading it could save you from taking a few hundred pictures only to find out later that Photosynth won‘t put them together the way you imagined.
Quick tips
- Start small. Pick a simple subject first, such as a piece of furniture or a single painting. You should be able to make a great 10-photo synth in just a few minutes if you follow the tips below. Then move on to something more ambitious.
- Remember the “Rule of 3”. Each part of the scene you‘re shooting should appear in at least three separate photos taken from different locations. This rule means that you are going to shoot a lot more photos for a synth than you would for any other purpose.
- Panorama first, then move around. Start by taking a panorama of your scene, then move around and take more photos from different angles and positions. If you just do a panorama you won‘t end up with a good 3-D experience.
- Have lots of overlap when shooting panoramas. Try for at least 50% overlap between photos.
- Limit the angles between photos. When moving around objects, try to get one photo every 25 degrees or so. That will make the synth work better. Larger angle differences on a subject won‘t match up.
- Shoot scenes with lots of detail and texture. The visual texture in the photos is what ties them together. A blank wall won‘t synth. One with lots of art or posters will work well.
- Don’t crop images. It confuses Photosynth.
- Shoot wide shots. Wide angle shots (photos taken from farther away, or with your camera‘s lens zoomed all the way out) reconstruct more reliably than closer shots. It‘s good to have close-ups, too, but you‘ll want to have good coverage of your subject with lots of nice overlapping wide shots.
- Orientation. Make sure your photos are all right-side-up before you start synthing.
Get pdf Photosynth Photography Guide
