Google Releases Three New Experimental Photography Apps

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Google has unveiled three new photography apps for the iOS App Store and Google Play. All three technology-rich apps focus on object recognition, person segmentation, stylization algorithms, efficient image encoding technologies and so on.

New photography apps part of “Appsperiments”

These new apps are the first installment of Google’s series of photography “appsperiments: usable and useful mobile photography experiences built on experimental technology,” the search giant said, in a blog post.

One of the photography apps is Selfissimo, an automated selfie app that clicks a black and white photo every time a user changes their pose, more or less like a photo booth. A user can tap photoshoot and then do different poses in front of the camera. As the app detects a pause in the movement of the user, it clicks a photo.

Another app, Scrubbies (iOS only), monitors and alters the speed and direction of video playback to create video loops of action scenes, replay moments, funny faces and so on. The app allows a user to capture the shot directly in the app and then mix the gestures to make an interesting video.

The third app, Storyboard, has been launched only for Android as of now. The app would select interesting frames of photos from videos you have taken using one of six visual styles. Turning photos into art-inspired images has grown popular after the arrival of the A.I. powered editing app Prisma, and Google’s latest app aims to build on that popularity.

Even though the company now focuses more on b2b, its consumer app still ranks among the 150 in the Photo & Video category on the App Store, notes TechCrunch. Also, it is not the first time that Google has come up with photography apps. Google previously designed the Motion Stills to make iOS’s Live Videos better. Thereafter, an updated version of the app was brought to Android offering a new recording experience for shooting shareable clips. The Live photo editing technology was also added to the Google Photos app, notes TechCrunch.

If Google gets positive feedback, chances are that all three experimental apps would be imbibed in Google Photos as well.

Star Wars AR stickers for Pixel

In a separate development, Google unveiled the Star Wars augmented reality stickers on the Pixel and Pixel 2 this week. These are 3D pictures visible inside photos and videos shot using AR tech in the Google camera app. Spicing up things further, Google is also launching cartoon versions of the Strangers Things kids and the Demogorgon, along with a few Star Wars characters and creatures, such as stormtroopers, R2-D2, BB-8, and porgs.

Not just that, but the California-based company also released its own creations, like a coffee mug, a weightlifting stalk of broccoli and a donut. As of now, all the pictures and stickers seem to work quite well. Google has launched all these stickers exclusively on the Pixel phones for now, and plans to release more stickers in the future, notes The Verge. Further, the Pixel phones should be updated to Android 8.1 to get the stickers.

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