Among the new features announced by Google on Android 10 Q, there is one that should particularly appeal to photographers. It will be possible to modify the background blur from one application to another.
For the last two years, smartphone manufacturers have been multiplying software and hardware solutions to detect the depth of their photos. It can be a second sensor only to calculate the depth, as on the OnePlus 6T, or a particularly effective sensor through the image processing, as on the Google Pixel 3.
Nevertheless, one of the main concerns with these background blur effects was their incompatibility from one application to another. With the exception of Google Photos or Facebook, apps were unable to change this blur effect, either to increase, soften, or change the focus on another subject in the frame.
Possible retouching on third-party applications
It must be said that the images extracted from these photo applications are simple JPG files that can not integrate more than just visual data. It is in this context that Google has announced the arrival, with Android 10 Q, "XMP metadata related to the elements of depth, with a map of the depth integrated in the same document for the devices that support it". In concrete terms, this means that the depth data in an image can be integrated directly into the file.
We can imagine that third-party applications will take advantage of this to modify the depth of field, the background blur, or to add color elements depending on the depth of this or that element. A feature that could for example be taken by applications allowing image editing such as Instagram, Photoshop Express or Snapseed Google.
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