The basic photogrammetric deliverable in heritage conservation is orthophotography (and other suitable raster projections) – closely followed today by a growing demand for photo-textured 3D surface models. The fundamental limitation of conventional photogram-metric software is twofold: it can handle neither fully 3D surface descriptions nor the question of image visibility. As a consequence, software which ignores both surface and image occlusions is clearly inadequate for the complex surface topography encountered, as a rule, in conservation or restoration tasks; geometric accuracy and good visual quality are then possible only at the cost of tiresome human interaction, especially in the phase of surface modeling. However, laser scanning and powerful modeling/editing software allow today fast and accurate collection of vast numbers of surface points and the creation of reliable 3D meshes. Close-range photo-grammetry is obviously expected to extend its horizon by taking full advantage of this new possibility. Here an approach is presented for the automated generation of orthoimages and perspective views from fully 3D surface descriptions derived from laser scanning. Initially, the algorithm detects surface occlusions for the novel view. Next – in contrast to conventional photogrammetric software which requires an operator to define individual original images as the source for image content – all avail-able images participate in a view-independent texturing of the new image. Thus, following a bundle adjustment, all surface triangles are back-projected onto all initial images to establish visibilities. Texture “blending” is realised via an appropriate weighting scheme, which regulates the local radiometric contribution of each original image involved. Finally, a basic statistical test allows to automati-cally filter out outlying colour values. At its present stage of implementation, the algorithm has been tried at the example of a Byzan-tine church in Athens. It is concluded that the presented combination of laser scanning with photogrammetry – resulting in geometric accuracy, high visual quality and speed – is essentially capable to automatically create novel views from several images, and hence provide a realistic, practicable approach in heritage conservation. Finally, several elaborations of the approach are also suggested.