Today we’ve made available the final release (or RTW – “release to web”) of Windows Live Essentials. I suggest reading Chris Jones’ blog post from earlier and of course downloading Windows Live Essentials! To celebrate the final release of Windows Live Essentials, I wanted to do a fun blog post about one of my favorite features. Problem is – I’ve got a pretty lengthy list of favorite features in the new Windows Live Essentials. However, late last week on Messenger because the new Messenger shows off photos my friends share on Windows Live (and Facebook and Flickr too), I caught a hilarious photo from my good friend Jason Moore that made me laugh. You may have read a few blog posts from Jason on SkyDrive and Office Web Apps on Inside Windows Live. His photo gave me the idea for this blog post. Because of that, I asked him to also help me with this post.
Photo Gallery, which is part of Windows Live Essentials, makes it super easy to edit and publish your photos. The new version of Photo Gallery introduces several new features such as facial recognition, improved retouch tools, and Photo Fuse. Jason is “mildly” silly and likes to do fun things with photos. As you can imagine, with the new Photo Gallery, Jason was able to do some pretty hilarious things with some of his photos – especially with Photo Fuse.
Photo Fuse was originally intended to help people create the perfect photo from multiple photos. Of course, Jason’s definition of the perfect photo is a little different. He was able to use it to create photos with multiple “Jasons” in them touring around Seattle. Case in point:
The Jason on the left looks unimpressed and the Jason on the right looks quizzical. This wonderful photo of Jason… and Jason… is actually two photos “fused” together.
What Jason did was set a camera up on a tripod and with a friend took a few shots close together. A tripod is handy to ensure things don’t move or change abruptly in the photos ensuring the best “fused” photo possible – but it’s not necessary.
Here is another good example – this time a little more creative:
The “Jasons” pretend to hold up the famous Pike Place Market neon Public Market sign. Teamwork!
In this shot, at Pike Place Market, the “Jasons” stop by a vendor stand looking at some fresh produce. The Jason on the right is of course impressed with the produce. However, the Jason on the left looks like he wonders what he’s doing here.
You’re not just limited to “fusing” two photos together. You can actually fuse quite a few photos together and multiple times to do some really interesting things. Look at this:
There are now 5 “Jasons” and they visited the Fremont Troll here in Seattle.
As you can see from the “Jasons” – you can do some funny and creative things with Photo Fuse. Download and give the new Windows Live Essentials a spin and check out Photo Fuse. Would love to see some creative uses for Photo Fuse just like what Jason has done. Leave a comment and link to some of your Photo Fused photos!