50 Best Websites 2009

In the history of photography, the leap from film to digital was a breakthrough as profound as the move from black-and-white to color. Photosynth is the first photo site that really capitalizes on that shift, with a new way to look at pictures. Instead of arranging photos in a traditional album, the site finds relationships among pictures and digitally composites them to create an immersive 3-D photo environment called a "synth." The best synths — like this one pieced together from the Apollo moon-landing shots — look like David Hockney himself collaged the pictures.

See pictures of Apollo 11's liftoff.