Adobe demos photography with infinite depth of field

The maker of the popular Internet based Flash platform, Adobe Systems Inc. demonstrated impressive new photography technologies during a recent Nvidia Tech Conference, that would allow users to refocus photos on their computers after the photo was originally snapped.

The company used plenoptic lenses, which essentially are many lenses clustered together that are able to focus on different parts of a picture (including the ability to capture 3D images), the result is a mosaic like non-natural group of micro-pictures with an infinite depth of field.

Specialized computer software is subsequently used to re-render the original micro-pictures to create a normal image.

What is most intriguing is that the user can choose what parts of the picture are in focus by using software, that includes a person, or scenery in the background.

 What is stressed by Teodor Georgiev, the senior research scientist at Adobe who demoed the technology (video embedded below), stresses the computer software is not simply re-focusing the image, it is actually re-computing the picture from about 50 different views of the same object captured by the lenses.

Although the lenses and the software behind the rendering could revolutionize the way we take and manage pictures, the technology remains price prohibitive and the software behind it is not readily available right now.

The Adobe R&D division most recently also unveiled a new tool in Adobe Air that allows developers to convert a single code-base into an application designed for multiple operating system platforms.