Every once in a while, a great technological breakthrough comes along that has us jumping up and down, bouncing off the walls, and running through the streets wearing cardboard signs proclaiming, “The future has arrived!”

Well, we just did all that, and now we’re back to tell you about this revolutionary advance. Adobe recently announced [via CNET News.com and Audioblog.fr] what basically amounts to camera technology with a multi-view lens that would allow people to take 3D pictures. (How cool does that sound?) With a bug’s eye-like lens, a camera could receive multiple sub-views taken from slightly different angles all at the same time. Then, with that information, a computer could reconstruct a model of the photographed scene in glorious 3D.

So we were left thinking, “Okay, sounds cool. But what does it do?”

Turns out, with a 3d photographic model practically anything is possible! (Alright, it won’t make you toast. But almost anything.)

• Selectively blur, or delete, everything a certain distance past the main subject in your photograph. (Chaotic backgrounds, be gone!)
• Shift the focus plane in your photo, after you take it. (Maybe the hotdog vendor behind your boss and his family at the World Series game is really more interesting!)
• Use a 3D healing brush to get rid of everything behind a person’s head. (No more telephone poles coming out of Grandpa Harold’s head!)

All this “computational photography” sounds easy enough. And while this is still only developing technology – with no release date in sight – we’re crazy excited about the possibilities. Dave Story, Adobe’s vice president of digital imaging product development, said, “The more things we can do that are impossible to do in a camera, the more powerful people’s ability to express themselves becomes.”

We’re still waiting for the flying cars, but allow us to be the first: “The future is here! The future is here!”

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