DigitalBeat

Shapeways, a Dutch startup, is announcing today that it can take digital photos and turn them into 3-D printed objects.

Consumers can log onto the Shapeways.com web site and upload any photo to the site. That photo is all it needs to be able to construct a 3-D relief sculpture of the person. The company’s Photoshaper technology then transforms the images into sculpted 3-D objects, which are shipped to the customer.  It can do this with any landscape, child’s photo, or a work of art. The creation is automatic and doesn’t require any expertise on the part of the user.

They’re called lightsculptures because you can see light shining through them.

Shapeways spun out of Philips last year with a technology for making plastic prototypes out of computer designs. It lets artists upload their creations and then get 3-D molded plastic objects. In January, Shapeways announced it was opening an  online store so artists could sell their creations.

The 3-D photos can be produced in 10 days at costs ranging from $40 to $50, including shipping. Each photo is about 5 inches by 3.5 inches. The target size for the JPEG, PNG or GIF image files is about 1.5 megapixels.

Based on what I can see here, this one doesn’t look all that interesting. It’s a fairly steep price to pay for a coffee-table curiosity. But the good thing is that this isn’t the only thing the company offers. The ability to create 3-D designs and print them as molded plastic is far more interesting than this particular product.

The company has 12 employees and is based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The company has funding from Philips but has not disclosed the amount.

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Tags: co:shapeways