Google’s new cinematic photos use machine learning and AI to give old images new depth.
Google
Google has a new innovation for the photos on your phone, and it promises to bring old memories back to life with automatic 3D animation. The feature, called Cinematic Photos, will be launching in the Google Photos app in the coming weeks, and uses animated layers to create artificial depth and movement in still images.
“To do this, we use machine learning to predict the depth of an image and produce a 3-D representation of the scene, even if the original image does not contain depth information from the camera, “said Jamie Aspinall, Google Photos product manager.” Then we animate a virtual camera for a smooth panning effect – just like from the movies. “
New cinematic photos appear at the top of your photo grid as featured highlights.
Google
Once you’ve updated to the latest version of the Google Photos app, you’ll start seeing new, cinematic versions of your memories as featured highlights at the top of the app’s photo grid. From there you can share your image with friends and family members as a short video clip.
Another upgrade, the app’s auto-curated Memories will now include things like your favorite people and activities. And if you want, you can hide specific people or time periods so that they don’t appear in your memories at all.
Aspinall adds that cinematic photos are still a work in progress, so in the coming months you can expect to see some changes and tweaks in how they look.
Also see: Google Photos is ending its unlimited free storage. Here’s What You Should Know