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Google Play Book announced its latest upgrade to make comic book reading on smartphone and tablet easier. Bubble Zoom expands speech bubbles of a comic with just a tap, making it easier to read those tiny letters on smaller handheld devices.
More comic fans are now turning to digital copies as they can read their favorite comic book right on their phones or tablets anytime anywhere. But sometimes, reading comic on these devices can be really hard as some speech bubbles are too small to be read. While some readers have to zoom the whole page of the comic, Bubble Zoom can expand a particular speech bubble for an easy reading,
By using the same technology to find the right image in Google Photos, Google Play Book trained their machine learning technology to recognize speech bubbles in a comic. Speech bubbles can be zoomed by taping it or for one-handed, Bubble Zoom can expand each speech bubble automatically, according to Android Official Blog.
The latest version of Google Play Books app for Android will have Bubble Zoom. However, it is currently available only to all Marvel and DC collected volumes supported as a "tech preview." Selected DC and Marvel comics are available with 50 percent off in Google Play Store by using the code SDCC2016 until July 24th, 2016.
Users can also upgrade their Play Books and provide feedback on supported comic volumes in the app. Google Play Book aims to bring the technology to all comic and manga.
On a video that introduces the new feature, Brady Duga, a software engineer for Google Play Books said, "We can detect shapes and objects and images -- we're very good at this. This is basically looking at a rich visual scene and extracting important information," as reported by Cnet.
Amazon's Comixology previously solved the problem of reading small texts with its "guided view." It zooms in the panels and pages, highlighting the speech and the art one scene at a time. The Bubble Zoom was announced first at the San Diego Comic-Con 2016 along with DC and Marvel Comics that was attended by more than 130,000 fans.
