Now and Then is an application for aligning and overlaying historical images with modern equivalents. Each combination of an old and new image is called a "fusion". You can see existing fusions in the
fusion gallery.
The site was created as an entry for the 2011 Libraryhack event.
How do I contribute?
Creating a new fusion is easy...
- Either
- Browse the archive of historical images to find a suitable "then" image, or...
- Source your own historical image and add it to the Now and Then group and/or tag it with nowandthen. Make sure that you have the right to use the image and that a permissive license (such as Creative Commons) is applied.
- Go to the location (with a reference copy of the historical image), and take a photo of the modern equivalent. Try to get as close to the original position and composition as possible.
- Upload your image to Flickr and add it to the Now and Then group and/or tag it with nowandthen. Make sure that a permissive license (such as Creative Commons) is applied.
- If you're using a historical image from the archive
- Optionally, indicate the common points between the images so that the overlaid images are well aligned.
- Voila! Your aligned fusion is ready for viewing.
What images can I contribute?
Currently, while Now and Then is in a Beta release period, the image collection includes only "
Photographs of Sydney before 1885" from the State Library of NSW. Other collections will hopefully be added at a later date.
What's new?
- RSS feeds
- Highest rated unfused images
- Geocoding for some historical images, more to come
- Map of historical images
What's next?
- Choose your own "then" image
- More datasets
- Alternative fusion viewers
- My votes
- Mobile view
- Layar mobile view