I couldn’t not mention PhotoSketch, could I? The demo video says it all, but a quick explanation might be useful. Basically, you sketch and label some simple shapes: man throwing, jumping dog, frisbee, and a background and PhotoSketch does a search and retrieve of images from the web that fit your shapes and labels. It then composites them into an astoundingly good photo montage.

It occurred to me while watching the demo, that you needn’t include more than one item, so if you’re just searching for a photo of a specific thing with a particular outline to fit your own montage, you could use this system as a sophisticated image search tool.

If it works as well as the demo video suggests, then the developers in Singapore are going to make a lot of money. Unfortunately, because they got mentioned on Mashable and are now trending on Twitter and elsewhere their web server crashed and they had to take their site down temporarily, so you cannot give it a try at the moment.