Google is rolling out some new features for the Google Photos app on Android that were once exclusive to its Pixel devices.
The new photo editing features are available as an enticement for Android users to subscribe to Google One, its consumer-focussed cloud storage and phone backup service.
The editing features promise to bring machine-learning magic to the editing experience, including Portrait Blur for the bokeh effect, even when a snap was taken in normal mode, and Portrait Light, a trick that improves the lighting on faces of close-up shots.
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The features work for newly taken photos, older images and when the original image wasn’t taken in portrait mode.
Google One is free up to 15 GB, and costs $1.99 per month for 100 GB, $2.99 per month for 200 GB, and $9.99 for per month for 2 TB.
The video editor brings trimming, stabilizing and rotating to videos, so that users can crop videos, change perspective, add filters, and apply brightness, contrast, saturation and warmth changes.
There are over 30 controls for editing video, but Google recommends testing it with cropping and straightening the frame to focus on the subject. It can also be used to improve the brightness of a video.
The new video editing features are already available in Google Photos on iOS and are coming to most Android devices in the coming weeks.
The redesigned editor is coming to iPhones and iPads in a few months.
Google notes that people who pay for Google One membership can apply these photo and video effects even to scans of images or professional shots.
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Features such as Portrait Blur, Portrait Light, Dynamic and sky suggestions are coming to Google One members imminently and are available with the latest Google Photos app on Android devices.
Pixel owners get the additional features as part of their ownership of the device.
Google introduced Google One in 2018 to offer a brand for the consumer version of Google Drive that made its consumer storage plans more competitive compared with prices offered by Dropbox and Microsoft with its OneDrive service.
