Shifting Perspectives

For thousands of years, innovations in art have appeared at a steady pace, with dramatic leaps arising every hundred years or so. But now the art world, like everything else, is leaping forward at a furious pace thanks to technology. In the last 20 years, computer graphics and interactive experiences have gone from a glorified Lightbright to stunning immersive worlds. These changes raise the bar to near limitless possibilities. Here’s some of the latest in cool tech for artists.

Image Resizer

Liquid Resize
Ever wanted to condense a rectangular photo to a square without losing content or cropping. Now you can with this amazing tool which uses algorithms to find what’s important in an image and allow you to recompose a shot with stunning simplicity.

3D lens
If recomposing a 2d photo by simply clicking and dragging isn’t wild enough for you, what if you could take a picture today and re-shoot the photo tomorrow without having to actually re-shoot it. No more problems with changing depth of field or even shifting your perspective. The brains over at Adobe are toying with a new 3D camera lens that will allow post-production changes never before possible. The video below goes into further detail on the technology.

3D in Flash
Flash is the web standard for cutting edge content delivery, but its never been able to truly handle 3D. With the latest version of flash and some other code, Flash can achieve real-time rendering, opening the door to new and exciting ways to experience the web.

So what does the future hold? Will users be able to customize the layout of e-learning, including photography, on-the-fly? Could still photography truly become interactive? Will users be able to enter virtual 3D worlds as immersive as a platform video game but with the flexibility and speed of Flash? Technology is becoming an ever increasing magic wand, able to transform the static to dynamic. The appropriate use of these innovations could make learning more engaging and even more relevant than ever before.