Facebook expands its 3D photos feature to work on pictures taken on older handsets such as the iPhone 7
- Facebook’s 3D photos will now work for older images and phones
- It will work on pictures that were captured by a phone with just a single lens
- Users can share 3D photos from your News Feed, a group or a Page
Facebook has improved its 3D photos feature to give more users the chance to bring their images to life.
The feature previously only worked for high-end smartphones with upmarket camera specifications.
But Facebook has now extended the feature so it works on older phones, such as mid-market Androids and the iPhone 7.
The feature can now also be used on the single lens, front-facing camera to take 3D selfies.
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Facebook has improved its 3D photos feature to give more users the chance to bring their images to life. The AI system automatically creates a depth map (pictured) which it turns into a moving photo
The feature previously only worked for high-end smartphones with upmarket camera specifications, such as the iPhone 11. But Facebook has now extended the feature so it works on older phones and pictures
Facebook says this improvement is due to advancements in its AI and teaching it to infer 3D structures from 2D photos within a fraction of a second.
‘This advance makes 3D photo technology easily accessible for the first time to the many millions of people who use single-lens camera phones or tablets,’ Facebook researchers said in a statement.
It will work on an iPhone 7 or newer and a recent mid-range Android handset.
Facebook says this improvement is due to advancements in its AI and teaching it to infer 3D structures from 2D photos within a fraction of a second. Facebook announced 3D photos for the first time in 2018
Facebook adds in its statement: ‘It also allows everyone to experience decades-old family photos and other treasured images in a new way, by converting them to 3D.
‘People with state-of-the-art dual-camera devices can benefit, too, since they can now use their single, front-facing camera to take 3D selfies.
‘Anyone with an iPhone 7 or higher, or a recent midrange or better Android device, can now try these options in the Facebook app.’
Facebook announced 3D photos for the first time in 2018 but it was only initially available with iPhones that could take portrait mode shots.
This allowed Apple to create so-called depth maps that reconstruct 3d data about the scene.
This later grew to include Samsung Galaxy models but these can now be automatically generated by Facebook’s own AI.
