Google’s latest version of Google Photos app for iOS brings a depth-editing feature, which means you can now pull up any portrait image that you’ve taken on your iPhone, and adjust the background blur and focus with just a few steps.
For the sake of comparison, I opened the same photo on both Google Photos and iOS’ Photos app. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting any one app to perform better than the other. If anything, I was expecting Google Photos app to produce better images. But wait till you see the results. Color Pop feature on Google Photos
Moving on to the depth-editing feature, the results were the same, sadly. In the photos below, I cranked the depth slider all the way up, and still the background, particularly on my right, is still very much visible. iOS’s Photos app, on the other hand, did a commendable job.
After scratching my head for a few minutes, I realized that Google Photos was not able to recognize the subject. Thankfully, you can adjust it by tapping the subject or background, depending on what you want to be blurred out in your image. I noticed the results to be comparatively better when you tap on the subject. Yes, it works, but it takes an extra step which can be avoided if you use iOS’s native Photos app directly. Even then, Google Photos messed up with edge detection. See this – Edited on Google Photos on iOS
