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Google adds AR objects to its GIF-making Android app
Google is the latest company to borrow Snapchat's augmented reality features, although this time it's not grafting them on to a social app. The company has released a new version of Motion Stills for Android that brings AR objects to your animated GIFs and videos. You can add chickens, dinosaurs and other objects to any horizontal surface in your shot, whether it's your hand, a plant or a table. And importantly, you don't have to be finicky when capturing your footage to make the result seem 'natural' -- it's using instant motion tracking tech that avoids the jarring visual anomalies you sometimes get in AR.
Google brings its fancy Motion Stills GIF-making app to Android
Motion Stills has existed in a strange space for the past year. It's a Google-made app but it's been available only on iOS, piggybacking off Apple's Live Photos function to create dramatic, stabilized GIFs and short videos. Android owners, Google's main user base, were left out of the fun entirely -- until today.
Google keeps improving Apple's Live Photos
Apple's Live Photos are a neat trick when done well, but in practice they tend to be a wobbly mess. Last year, Google showed off a much more elegant solution with it's Motion Stills app for iOS, which converted shaky Live Photos to smooth looping GIFs or movie files that could actually be exported to Instagram and other services. This week, Google continued to improve upon Apple's Live Photos with the latest version of Motion Stills, which adds better color depth, smoother stabilization and the ability to export loops in their original Apple-only format.
Google Photos will compensate for your shaky-cam Live Photos
The latest update for Google Photos brings some of the same features introduced in the standalone Motion Stills app into the main product, making it easier to edit, stabilize and share Live Photos taken on an iPhone. Like Motion Stills, Google Photos uses advanced stabilization to create moving images with frozen backgrounds or wide, sweeping pan shots.
Google's new iOS app turns Live Photos into GIFs
Cinemagraphs -- those artsy hybrids of animated gifs and film stills -- used to require a good deal of work to set up and create. That changes today with Google's latest iOS app Motion Stills, which uses Apple's Live Photos feature along with Google's own video stabilization to freeze the background of your photos and create dramatic looping gifs or video snippets.
