Redmond, Washington — Since its release about a year ago, Photosynth is, without doubt, one of Microsoft’s more impressive mobile apps, and in order to further energize it, software behemoth has just released an update to its popular panoramic picture taking app for the iPhone, Photosynth, with greater compatibility with iOS 5 and new social sharing features.
According to a blog post today, noted that a new version, v 1.1.3, is now available, the freshly updated app empowers users to create and share Photosynths via Bing Maps, Twitter, or Facebook.
The recently updated app is now available globally, it contains performance tweaks particularly for iOS 5 users and adds Twitter sharing support, as well. Previously, photo panoramas could be shared on Bing Maps and Facebook.
Now the Photosynth app allows you to snap a 360 degree panoramic image using your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch’s camera, which it then stitches together into one flat plane. Further, the image can then be saved to the device or uploaded to Photosynth.net (and you can even get them featured on Bing Maps), in addition to sharing them on Twitter and Facebook.
While the mobile app is certainly impressive, but it does not delivers quite as many features as the web app–which enables you to stitch together 3D panoramas by combining images from multiple perspectives–the app has proven to be quite a hit. And, according to Microsoft, the app has crossed 6 million downloads so far, though, as usual, it is not clear how many active users there currently are.
Also new in the latest version is a tighter integration with Twitter (via iOS5’s built-in Twitter capabilities).
In case if you are not familiar with Photosynth, it is a mis-judged product that makes it almost brain-dead simple to create photo panoramas without any additional stitching/editing required. The app itself completes all the task and the user chooses where the upload/share the final panorama, here is Microsoft’s description of the app’s capabilities:
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Capture Full-Sphere Panoramas: Look and capture in all directions more easily than what most of us can do with DSLRs and point-and-shoot cameras.
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View Immediately: With fast On-Device Processing, you can see the final panorama in a few minutes, without requiring an internet connection or data plan. Very handy for those impromptu panoramas and immediate gratification that you captured the perfect shot.
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Save Locally and on the Cloud: Your panoramas saved on your phone can also be saved and viewed online at http://photosynth.net.
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Share Immediately: Share your panorama immediately via Twitter, Facebook or Bing Maps.
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View in Browser or App: Zoom, pan, and rotate your panorama in any direction through the Photosynth app or through the mobile browser.
More importantly, though, the company also today announced that Photosynth is now available worldwide. You can download the app from iTunes, for your iPhone 3GS, 4, or 4S, iPad 2, or iPod touch (4th generation).