Way cool! “Rendering Synthetic Objects Into Legacy Photographs” demonstrates a new technology for adding three-dimensional shapes to preexisting photographs. With the help of a human eye to establish the geometry of a space and light sources, the software predicts how the light would fall on and around the inserted volume. In this video, it looks so realistic, it’s almost spooky. Kevin Karsch, a Computer Science PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, explains how it works in an interview below. Other members of the team are Varsha Hedau, David Forsyth, and Derek Hoiem.[
http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2011/10/way-cooler-than-photoshop-add-3d-objects-to-2d-photos/247346/](http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2011/10/way-cooler-than-photoshop-add-3d-objects-to-2d-photos/247346/)