The first Windows Vista "Ultimate Extras"

Darren blogged about Bill Gates Keynote at CES, which I watched at home last night.  In passing was they mentioned first 2 "Ultimate Extras" . Vista ultimate, has a section in Windows update for "Ultimate extras". The first two will be Motion Desktop and Group Shot. I've mentioned group shot before. The idea is that you take similar pictures taken from the same place and combine then together to give the best one. So you might take a family group 2 or 3 or more times. In each one, someone will have their eyes shut or be pulling a silly face. Group shot lets you overlay the pictures and get each person at their best. I like to use it to remove people and cars from a view; here's one I did on my new camera in oxford last week. As you can see in the frames down the side, it was a busy shopping day with lots of people walking down the street, and I was shooting with a wide angle lens. There was no way I was going to get a clear shot. Knowing I had group shot I shot 9 frames over about 30 seconds. Using group shot I combined the images to give me an almost clear foreground. I then used Digital image suite to a little bit more retouching. straighten the image, remove the fisheye effect of the lens, correct the perspective and create a toned black and white image.