In April, HTC rolled out an update to its Gallery app that had a feature to take advantage of the One’s (M8) Duo Camera setup which it called UFocus. We’ve covered this specific functionality before, but today’s update to the Gallery app now allows users of HTC’s flagship smartphone to have more flexibility in using UFocus – something that is sure to make a lot of HTC One M8 owners happier.
The UFocus feature uses the HTC One’s Duo Cam setup in such a way that the second camera – a 1/3-inch 4MP CMOS sensor – provides a little bit of “depth of field” to the image captured by the main camera, something that could only be achieved with single lens reflex cameras before this. The main complaint about the feature was that it had no control over this “bokeh” effect and would apply the “depth of field” blur without control, giving the image a look that was closer to “fake” than “brilliant”.
With the update, HTC One users can now have control over how much blur they want to apply to achieve a more realistic “depth of field” effect with the images that they capture on the smartphone’s otherwise excellent camera. There is now a slider on the left side of the screen that gives users a blur intensity scale from 0 to 100. Users may still feel that the effect’s separation of foreground from background is not accurate enough, but this is mostly what you get with a non-SLR camera trying to mimic SLR features.
Also within the update are some additional features directed at HTC Sense 6 device users. The Gallery app for Sense 6 devices now allows use of the Dimension Plus feature, where users can apply 3D-like effects to images. The app update also incorporates the Pan 360 feature, mimicking Android’s Photosphere. So if you are an HTC One M8 or a Sense 6 device user, be sure to visit the Play Store soon to grab that update.
