Once App On a Time

“Once App on a Time” allows users to easily produce professional photo-montages combining the vibrant present of Tel-Aviv city, with its nostalgic past, hence providing a new way of experiencing the city’s history. The App presents a gallery of photos of Tel-Aviv from its photograph archives. Each photo includes information on the historical landmark, driving directions and more. Once a photo is selected, the App’s unique interface allows visitors to 21st century Tel-Aviv to place themselves at exactly the same spot, looking in the same direction, as the original cameraman, many, many years ago. A new photo of today's Tel-Aviv is then merged with the old photo, right from the App, using Computer Vision algorithms developed to make the photo-montage as seamless as possible. The final photos can be edited for contrast and color and then shared with friends on-line.

The App was developed in order to provide visitors to Tel-Aviv with a new way of experiencing and learning about the City’s past. It offers a new way of publishing online the many photos stored in municipal archives and galleries. Finally, our goal is to use the App as a means of encouraging residents of Tel-Aviv, past and present, to contribute personal, geo-tagged photos of Tel-Aviv’s past, enriching the photographed, documented history of the city.

The App was developed for non-commercial purposes by undergraduate and graduate students, along with their instructors at the Open University of Israel, the Academic College of Tel-Aviv Yaffo, and Tel-Aviv University and has been launched late January 2013. Please see our web-page for examples of what Once App on a Time can do!