Microsoft Live Labs has released a technology preview of Photosynth, an application that can turn two-dimensional images into three-dimensional landscapes. The application is so cool that the word cool would have to be redefined.

From the sound of it, Photosynth seems like a fairy tale story getting into the realm of reality. The folks at Photosynth seem very confident of the potential offering and say that it "will change the way you think about digital photos forever".

What does Photosynth do?
Simply, Photosynth takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3-Dimensional space. With this data, users can walk or fly through a scene, zoom in and out, see where different photos were taken in relation to one another and find similar photos to the one you are viewing. A photo is analyzed to intricately highlight many distinctive features - that could range from paintings on a wall to a fly on a table!

It doesn’t stop here. The application is so mind boggling, it’s like an adrenaline rush just reading about it. While processing an image, Photosynth will create a point cloud that gives the image a unique identifier, a DNA-like profile that describes the features that have been recognised in the image. With this ‘Image DNA’, Photosynth could show other photos that have similar features to the one currently being viewed.

Also, the folks at Photosynth talk about annotations, tags, or even URLs being applied to an image and transferred to similar images. And this would enable Photosynth to connect your photographs into a seamless web of images and information, allowing users to browse a virtual universe of interconnected scenes that constantly evolves and changes over time.

The application hasn’t been made available as yet (Darn it!), but you can console yourself by having a look at the video and read up on the team blog.