The company described the software as "an advanced computer vision and image-processing program", which uses methods such as object recognition and face detection to assemble pictures.

Having automatically identified interesting parts of pictures, AutoCollage combines the separate pictures into a composite picture by deliberately following "natural features" as a boundary between images.

Microsoft said AutoCollage followed three main criteria to choose the best images:
* Choosing images that are most representative of the overall theme (eg. avoiding duplications, choosing people or groups of people).
* Laying out the images in an interesting way (eg. without one image overly dominating the collage, ensuring important parts of the photo are visible).
* Blending the images together so the joins aren’t visible.

An example of the finished results from Microsoft Research AutoCollage

AutoCollage runs on Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2 and above, and is available worldwide through a 30-day free trial.

Only users in the UK and US can currently buy a full version from the Microsoft Research website.

“We've tested tens of thousands of different collages in the course of our research, and the positive feedback we’ve received from our user studies shows we’ve answered these challenges successfully,” Carsten Rother, a researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge.

Placing the images before the software works its magic