AutoCollage 2008 by Microsoft Research

The newly announced AutoCollage 2008 by Microsoft Research lets one compile a set of individual photographs into one seamless collage. Available to trial from the Microsoft Research download site, AutoCollage supports Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2 and above.

There are three main criteria that AutoCollage considers to ensure that it chooses the best images to feature in the collages it creates:

• Choosing images that are most representative of the overall theme (eg. avoiding duplications, choosing people or groups of people)
  
• Laying out the images in an interesting way (eg. without one image overly dominating the collage, ensuring important parts of the photo are visible)
  
• Blending the images together so the joins aren’t visible