HTC may have impressed us with their image-blurring technology in the HTC One M8, but Google really took it home with their Google Camera app. It is able to determine distances without the need of a secondary camera. This doesn’t just give us the selective blurring abilities, there’s also a 3D effect that can be applied to these shots.
You can read all about those in our previous article, where we mention how great of an idea it would be to turn these 3D images into interactive live wallpapers. Today we are here to show you an app that does just that – Lens Blur Live Wallpaper.
How to use Lens Blur Live Wallpaper
It’s also a pretty simple app to use. All you need to do is take some images using the Lens Blur feature on the Google Camera. These can then be used with Lens Blur Live Wallpaper to create your fun homepage experiences.
Upon launch, the app does present you with multiple options. These are your typical Nexus and Samsung live wallpapers, among others. You know… just in case you want them, but we will skip them for now. You can tap on Lens Blur LWP. From there, go to settings and select “Choose Background”.
You can then select your Lens Blur image, press the back button and hit Apply. That should be it!
Don’t try to use landscape photos. I tried it and the image was squished horizontally.
Our experience
The UI and experience needs a bit of work. I feel like the addition of the other live wallpapers, though possibly convenient to some, is more of a distraction on the app. It adds confusion and deviates you from the function that really matters.
Thankfully, there is a message that pops up, telling you to choose the Lens Blur LWP option. Regardless, an intuitive app wouldn’t need to give you such notice. Maybe all it needs is better organization, or hiding the other wallpapers in a separate menu.
If we move past this, we can make the app do some pretty cool things with our Lens Blur photos. After all, it’s a live wallpaper app. You won’t be using it for extended periods of time. It works as expected and is free to try. Download it from the Google Play Store to give it a try.
