Google Photos Gains Advanced Editing Features for iPhones

Google One subscribers on iPhones can now tweak portrait photos and HDR levels in the Google Photos app as part of a new subscription perk. The change was spotted by 9to5Google and follows a broader rollout to Android phones that started in February.

If you’re running iOS 14.0 and have an iPhone with 3GB of RAM — essentially the iPhone 7 Plus, 8 Plus, X, and above — you’ll be able to make use of these new tools. The first of these features is portrait lighting, which lets you change the position of light sources in portrait photos. There’s also a “blur” a tool that allows for the addition of retroactive software blur on images captured without portrait mode.

Color focus is another option that’s like blur in that it enhances the focus on your subject — only it does it by draining the color from the background while keeping your subject in color, similar to the Spot Color feature on Motorola phones. Smart Suggestions lets Google’s A.I. tweak the image with an array of suggestions, regardless of if it’s a landscape image or human, while a new HDR setting lets you apply an HDR boost. These features first made their debut in the Google Photos app that shipped with the Pixel 5 and 4a 5G, so it’s good to see Google bringing them to more users.

The Google Photos app remains one of the best photo-management apps on any platform, even compared to Apple Photos. It offers seamless backup, easy-to-use editing tools, and a clean interface. It feels much more at home on Android, but the Google has made it work just as well on iOS.

Google One has perks other than photo-editing tools and online storage, but most of them are more useful on Android phones like the Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro. They include full phone backups from SMS to apps, as well as priority access to a Google support agent when you need help. Google also spotlights deals for Google One subscribers, but those haven’t been as useful as they could have been in our experience.

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