Google puts Camera app in Play Store with fake bokeh function

Google has put its own Camera app in the Play Store. This app can replace the default photo taking app on phones. The app includes the Lens Blur feature, which Google claims can give photos a fake bokeh effect.

The app appeared in the Play Store and can be installed on all devices with Android 4.4, which means that many existing users are left out for the time being. Thanks to the removal of the app, users of almost all future Android devices will have the choice to use this app instead of the application supplied by the smartphone manufacturer; every manufacturer customizes the camera app.

Google Camera has a new interface compared to the app that was on Nexus devices until now. Users can take photos with a large button across the width of the screen on the right, while the options are on the left. In addition, the viewfinder now displays 100 percent of the sensor image, so the user does not get a truncated widescreen preview with a non-widescreen sensor.

A new feature is Lens Blur, which allows users to blur the background of a photo afterwards to emulate an artificial version of the bokeh effect of expensive cameras. Google explains that the app calculates whether an object is in the foreground or background based on multiple photos. With that, Google also emulates one of the functions of the second camera on the HTC One (M8) with a single camera. There was already a rumor about Lens Blur a few weeks ago.

So Google does indeed use triangulation with information about how the phone’s camera is aligned and what the pixels in various photos represent to enable the feature. The function also makes it possible to determine afterwards which point in the photo should be displayed sharply.

Compared to the old camera app, some features are also missing. For example, it is no longer possible to manually set the white balance and the time-lapse option has also been removed. However, an apk teardown from Android Police shows that references to these modes are still present in the app. In addition, the source code also contains mentions of new options, including an ‘Advanced Camera Mode’ and ‘Wideangle Mode’. It is likely that these will be made available in a future version of the app.