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Google Meet adds a quick settings panel for all of your favorite background effects
Blurs, backdrops, and more — all just a couple of clicks away
Whether you're still working remotely or trying out a new hybrid situation, video conferences are still a common factor in the lives of millions of employees. Google Meet is one of the best ways to hold meetings online, in both one-on-one situations and company-wide keynotes. To make it easier to manage your video's appearance, Google is adding a dedicated effects panel to its UI.
Google Duo has new rainbow-filled AR filters to celebrate LGBTQ pride
When a rainbow's on a filter, you can celebrate pride anytime!
Pride Month is over, but the rainbow arcs over yonder. As such, Google is beginning to roll out some colorful new filters to its video calling app, Duo.
Google has been working on implementing live filters and effects for Duo video calls over the course of the past couple of years. We've seen a few of them pop up for special holidays like Holi and Valentine's Day, but today, we finally have a bank of 13 standard fare filters and effects to embarrass ourselves with when chatting with our colleagues, friends, and loved ones.
Gboard added the option to use your phone's camera to create custom GIFs in May. The tool came with a few fun effects to apply over the clips, too, like question marks to express confusion and mock "breaking news" chyrons. An update today brings a few new GIF effects and custom text overlays, as well as more practical improvements like support for additional languages.
The Gboard team has unleashed a fresh beta of version 7.3. There's nothing immediately popping up as a brand new change or feature, but there is a lot to look at in the teardown. There are some big practical features coming, like OCR and improved handling for Battery Saver mode; but there are also some fun features like a text tool and new special effects for your custom GIFs.
There's a new version of Duo rolling out today, but it doesn't bring any huge changes for users. However, a teardown shows that the developers are still plenty active as they work on some tools to experiment with camera effects, including new controls for adjusting brightness, contrast, and saturation. Also in this update are new details for a voicemail-like feature for sending voice and video messages outside of a call.
Yesterday's update to Allo came with announcements that it now supports reactions (basically "likes") and that the doomed blobmoji are to be kept on life support in the form of a sticker pack. As meager an update as it might seem at first glance, it turns out that there are several other new features in this release. On top of that, a teardown shows quite a bit is in the works.
YouTube has always been one of Google's less conventional properties, but the sudden leap from version 6.0 to 10.0 gave everybody a surprise. Even stranger is that with such a substantial jump in versions, there are virtually zero meaningful changes to the user-facing features. While there's relatively little for us to enjoy right now, a full teardown reveals that there are at least a few additions that might be worthy of a major version bump.
I know, I know. You are tired of filter and effect apps, and so am I. But this Afterlight app looks good, really good. After starting out on iOS and gaining popularity due to its simplicity and quality, the app has just been released on the Play Store for Android devices running 4.0.3 and up.
Megapixels, megashmixels. We could debate for near eternity over which smartphone has the best camera, but sometimes all that really matters is which is the most fun. Sony wants you to think its cameras are, so the company has updated its augmented reality camera app and tossed in an additional six new themes for good measure.
Photoshop Touch may not be completely comparable to Adobe's desktop counterpart, but when you compare it to other photo editors on the Android platform, it's still the most powerful piece of software out there. At $10, it better be, too. Today, the best just got a bit better, especially if you own a Nexus 7. The app has improved support for 7" tablets. Though, there's a catch: the resolution on said tabs have to be 1024x768 or higher. Sorry, Galaxy Tab 2 7.0.
The last time we covered Aviary, the powerful mobile photo editor was limited to being launched as a plugin inside the stock gallery app. Now, Aviary the company has booted Aviary the photo editor from the nest, launching it as a standalone app. Users everywhere rejoice, as they can now find Aviary after installing it.
After a few days of relatively disappointing free premium apps of the day in the Amazon Appstore, today we have a real treat - the Pro version of a photo editing app PicSay. Before I go on, I must note that this is the only photo editing app I actually bought quite a while ago, after playing around with the free version. It's no wonder - the app has 4.8 stars and over 11,000 ratings in the Market.
When it comes to photo editing on the fly, there are usually two kinds of apps: those intended for mindless fun, and those intended for actual work. Without a doubt, Camera ZOOM FX falls into the latter category, along with its mediocre UI, strange (though not necessarily poor) selection of effects, and (relatively) low price tag. So is it worth a look? A purchase? Read on for the full Android Police review.