The Technology Behind Cinematic Photos

Looking at photos from the past can help people relive some of their most treasured moments. Last December we launched Cinematic photos, a new feature in Google Photos that aims to recapture the sense of immersion felt the moment a photo was taken, simulating camera motion and parallax by inferring 3D representations in an image. In this post, we take a look at the technology behind this process, and demonstrate how Cinematic photos can turn a single 2D photo from the past into a more immersive 3D animation.