Late last week, Google issued a massive update to the Google Camera app, allowing users to experience DSLR-like bokeh and Lytro-like refocusing capabilities with any camera sensor. This was made possible because in addition to image data, the primary camera sensor is also used to capture depth data. The end result is quite similar to HTC's recently opened Duo Camera System. But rather than using two lenses like Duo Camera (or an array of micro lenses like Lytro), Google's solution has users slowly move the camera upwards after taking a shot. This parallax effect is then used to interpolate depth data.

Viewing these new depth-laden images from within the provided viewer app is nice, but it's certainly not as convenient as viewing these same images on your computer with a significantly larger screen. Luckily, GitHub user  created the open source webapp Depthy. Posted to the forums by panrafal's friend XDA Forum Member th7org, Depthy allows you to extract depth data from the new Google Camera app's images. Once that's done, you can generate your own parallax images, which through the magic of WebGL allow you to virtually adjust your viewing perspective ever so slightly. Furthermore, all of this is done locally through the webapp, and can even be done on WebGL-compatible mobile browsers such as most recent builds of Chrome.

To get started generating your own parallax images or extracting depth maps, head over to the webapp thread and give Depthy a shot. And if you wish to incorporate this depth map and parallax image creation functionality into a native Android or PC application, head over to the project's GitHub to check out the code.