Ryan Haines / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google Photos appears to be getting ready to introduce new face retouching effects.
- While Camera has its own face retouch option, Photos has lacked a similar after-the-fact tool.
- Right now none of this is functional, but search keywords hint at what we can expect it to do.
When you’re looking to tweak a picture you just took, Google Photos offers some quick and easy tools for making common adjustments. You can play around with contrast, color balance, and filters, sure, but what if your editing needs are a little more targeted, and you only want to adjust a few small, specific parts of a pic? The Photos app looks like it’s working on just such a tool, one designed to get peoples’ faces looking their best.
Google has already offered face retouching directly in the Camera app for years now, letting you smooth out lines, and brighten under-eye bags. That works fine for what it is, but includes only limited options, and is only available in selfie and portrait modes.
Don’t want to miss the best from Android Authority?
Instead of forcing users to select that option at the time they take a shot, Photos appears to be working on its own “face retouch” editing options. We’re first seeing evidence in this direction with Google’s version 7.49 release, and while we haven’t yet been able to get a look at any of these edits in action, some new text strings hint at what to expect.
Code
<string name="photos_photoeditor_enchilada_effects_face_retouch">Face retouch</string>
<string name="photos_photoeditor_enchilada_effects_face_retouch_description">Retouch faces</string>First, we’ve got a couple that basically announce this addition.
Code
<string name="photos_editor_effect_search_tag_acne">acne</string>
<string name="photos_editor_effect_search_tag_bag">bag</string>
<string name="photos_editor_effect_search_tag_blemish">blemish</string>
<string name="photos_editor_effect_search_tag_dark_circles">dark circles</string>
<string name="photos_editor_effect_search_tag_eye">eye</string>
<string name="photos_editor_effect_search_tag_pimple">pimple</string>
<string name="photos_editor_effect_search_tag_teeth">teeth</string>
<string name="photos_editor_effect_search_tag_touch">touch</string>
<string name="photos_editor_effect_search_tag_up">up</string>
<string name="photos_editor_effect_search_tag_whiten">Whiten</string>And then beyond that, we find a number of keywords that Photos will use to point users in the direction of this tool when using the app’s search feature.
What we can’t say just yet is whether or not we might expect to have individual control over edits down to level — the ability to clean up pimples without whitening teeth, for instance — but it’s something we’ll be keeping an eye out for.
Still, even without that much insight into how this will function, we really like the idea of bringing a tool like this to Google Photos, so we’re optimistic to see just how useful it might end up being.
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
Thank you for being part of our community. Read our Comment Policy before posting.
