One UI 6.1.1’s Live Effect feature is Samsung's take on the Google Pixel's Cinematic Wallpapers

When Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Z Flip 6 at its second 2024 Galaxy Unpacked event, they spent a lot of time talking about the new cover screen personalization options. For example, they highlighted how the phone can use AI to create a custom wallpaper or apply weather effects to your lock screen photo. While these two features greatly expand the number of ways that Flip users can personalize their cover screen, they aren’t actually new, as they first appeared on the Galaxy S24 series earlier this year. There’s one wallpaper feature that’s actually entirely new to One UI 6.1.1 that didn’t get talked about as much, though: Live Effect.

Live Effect is a feature that extracts depth information from 2D photos of people or pets to create a parallax photo. Normally, to create a parallax photo, you need multiple photos at slightly different angles to capture depth information. However, it’s long been possible to simulate this process with a single, flat 2D image. By using a machine learning algorithm to separate the objects in the foreground from the objects in the background, you can then simulate a parallax effect by inferring depth information from the original image, projecting the foreground and background into 3D space, and then moving a virtual camera to produce the effect.

Here’s a detailed explanation of how Live Effect works courtesy of this post from Samsung:

“Live Effects technology separates important objects in a photo using the image clipper to create two images: a ‘separated foreground object’ and a ‘background with the object removed.’ Then, it fills in the empty space in the background where the object was removed using the object eraser to fill in a different background. However, this will simply result in two flat images. To solve this problem, depth information is extracted from the original image to give a sense of depth (volume) to each foreground and background. This three-dimensional foreground and background are projected into 3D space, and the viewpoint of the virtual camera viewing it and the foreground and background are naturally moved to provide binocular parallax. With just one photo, you can experience a vivid effect as if you were back in the place where the photo was taken and seeing the scene again.”

To use Live Effect, simply launch the Samsung Gallery app, open any photo with a person or animal, and then swipe up from the bottom. Near the bottom of the photo, you’ll see a few chips, including one for live effect. Tap it and you should see a sparkle emoji appear above text that reads “applying live effect…” After a few seconds, the simulated parallax photo will start zooming in and out so you can see the result. At the bottom, you can choose to share the Live Effect or save a copy of it. This works entirely offline, so you don’t need a good network connection to create a Live Effect.

Since the resulting Live Effect is saved as an MP4 video, you can go back to the Samsung Gallery app and set it as your wallpaper if you want. One UI lets you use a video as your wallpaper on the lock screen as well as on the cover screen. In addition, the OS also lets you use a video as your call or alarm background, provided you use the stock Samsung dialer and clock apps respectively.

Live Effect is currently only available on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6 since both foldables are the only Samsung devices that run One UI 6.1.1 at the moment. Samsung says the feature will roll out to multiple older models, though, including the Galaxy Z Fold 4/Flip 4, the Galaxy Z Fold 5/Flip 5, the Galaxy S22/S23/S24 series, the Galaxy S23 FE, and the Galaxy Tab S8/S9 series. It’s no surprise that many existing devices will get the feature, as they’re all more than powerful enough for the necessary computations. After all, Google already offers a very similar feature called “Cinematic Wallpaper” on its own Pixel devices, and that also runs entirely on-device on the Pixel 6 and later.

What is surprising is that Samsung chose not to give much attention to Live Effect at Unpacked, especially since they just reaffirmed their intention to launch an XR platform with Google later this year. Apple recently launched a similar feature on their Vision Pro headset, so we’d be surprised if Samsung and Google don’t have plans to do something similar on whatever device they’re cooking up.

Thanks to Reddit user FragmentedChicken for the tip!