Microsoft has announced a new service from its Live Labs called Photosynth that it claims will change the way you view, experience, and share photos. The application can transform digital photos into a three-dimensional, 360-degree experience allowing anyone viewing your Photosynth to be in your shoes as you explore the location in the photos.

Photosynth allows the viewer to look up and down as well as the pan from left to right. Viewers can also zoom in and out to reveal a full sense of the location in the photos. The application provides close-up detail of a place and is a collaboration between National Geographic and Microsoft.

Photosynth analyzes each photo for similarities to others uploaded and it uses that data to estimate where a photo was taken and recreates the environment to display the photos. Photosynth requires anywhere from 20 to 300 photos depending on the size of the place of the object with overlapping each shot from a number of locations angles. The software is free for download and is available for Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Via Microsoft