Windows Live Essentials beta and Photo Fuse Impressions

I wanted to try out the all-new Windows Live Essentials beta because of its awesome new features; especially Photo Fuse. I was in love with the concept the first time I heard about it. Mostly, because I always click multiple pics of same scene just to make sure nobody is looking around or has their eyes closed. Even after taking enough precautions, when I transfer the pics to the computer, I find many flaws that shouldn’t have been there (probably because I’m a lousy photographer). So, when I heard about the Photo Fuse feature Microsoft has been working on for next Windows Live Photo Gallery, I couldn’t wait to see it in action.

I was a bit unsure whether it will work as expected because most of these so-called “cool” features don’t quite work out for me. So, today I downloaded and installed Live Essentials Photo Gallery and I’m glad to say that Microsoft has implemented it in unique way. I tried almost dozen of sets of similar photos for Fuse. Some of the results were good, while others were not-so-good. Out of the 11 sets I tested, it identified all the front-facing faces in the photo and displayed alternative faces from other similar photographs. Only glitch is, it doesn’t identify the faces, it just assumes the same position in the other photo.

Blending multiple photos in one is also not as clean as I would’ve wanted. It does not detect or blend the background of the faces but considering image processing hasn’t reached there yet, it’s good enough for now.

The software is still in beta, so I’m sure Microsoft will improve things for final version. But, I will certainly be waiting for the day where photo management applications start identifying the person in the photo and we can replace the face without affecting the background.