A new way to browse high resolution images

Who’d have thought we’d see the day when Microsoft release a product for an Apple device that actually works like an Apple program?

Well that day has come with the release of Seadragon Mobile, an iPhone app that takes photo viewing to a whole new level. The program gives you access to thousands of pictures over the air, all of which can be zoomed and panned with a flick or a pinch of your fingers.

The user interface in Seadragon Mobile is a wonderful thing. You start by selecting the content you wish to view, from a scrollable list. Content is divided into categories such as history, maps, art and photos, or you can choose to view images uploaded by users of the Photosynth service.

Once you’ve made your selection, a zoomed-out version of the image appears on screen. In the case where there are multiple images in an album, Seadragon Mobile displays a series of tiny thumbnails. You can then quickly zoom into any area just by pinching the screen, or flick outwards to zoom out again. It makes it ever-so simple to view extremely large, high resolution images, photo collections, or even scanned documents, working rather like a microfiche reader.

Other options in Seadragon Mobile include the ability to create slideshows, a tool for adding your own Deep Zoom content, and RSS feeds.

Seadragon Mobile brings some interesting new technology to the iPhone and presents an enjoyable way to view high res images.