Google Photos gets new editing tools that are all about subtle touch-ups

Google Photos just made your camera roll feel like it came with a makeup artist included, and the results are refreshingly understated.

By Shikhar Mehrotra Published April 20, 2026

Google Photos Touch Up feature in action. — Google

Whether it is dark circles from a late night of work, a blemish that showed up uninvited, or something similar that could use additional brightness, Google Photos now has you covered.

Google has officially rolled out a new Touch Up suite inside its Photos app editor, integrating face retouching tools directly into the app for the first time. Previously, such adjustments were only available inside Google’s Camera app at the time of capture.

What tools are actually on offer?

Now, with the new Touch Up feature (including options to smooth skin, whiten teeth, and brighten eyes), you can edit a photo you’ve already taken, right there in the same app. No need to export it, open another app, make edits there, and save it back.

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The Touch Up feature gives you editing options: heal, smooth, under eyes, irises, teeth, eyebrows, and lips. Each option is paired with an intensity slider that controls how much of the effect is applied to the picture. The goal, as it seems, is refinement, not transformation.

Can you edit individual people in a group photo?

Yes, and this is where the new feature gets genuinely useful. Google’s AI detects individual faces, so in a group shot, you can actually whiten one person’s teeth or smooth their skin without the effect bleeding onto anyone standing beside them.

Currently, the tool supports up to six faces per photo. The rollout is gradual for now. The Touch Up feature is currently available on Android devices running Android 9.0 or later with at least 4GB of RAM. For the billion-plus people who use the Photos app daily, this makes it a proper one-stop shop for editing.

This move puts the Google Photos app in direct competition with the dedicated retouching apps, such as Facetune and Snapseed.

Shikhar Mehrotra

News Writer

For more than five years, Shikhar has consistently simplified developments in the field of consumer tech and presented them…

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