Artificial intelligence has been quietly revolutionizing photography for a little while…but not in the way that you think. With Google’s launch of the new Pixel 10 series, I’m enthralled by the new new editing features that are going to revolutionize the process for so many users – and you should be too.
Don’t get me wrong, the current generation of smartphone photo editing software is frankly amazing. The tools from Apple, Samsung, and Google are all great. But with the launch of Pixel 10 series, Google has surged into the lead by allowing users to type – or even speak – their desired changes into the photo editor and have them come out with sparkling results. As a semi-professional photographer, it blows my mind to see this much power in a hand-held device.
The media has been in an overheated frenzy of discussions of AI in photography, with the late Pope modelling a ski jacket emblematic of that. But let’s not forget that photos have always been edited.
The versions of photographs that you see are the versions that a photographer or perhaps a photo editor wanted you to see. This has been true for over a hundred years, since the days of photography masters like Stieglitz, Ansel Adams, and Cartier-Bresson.
Traffic cameras take pictures. Photographers make pictures.
The difference is that the ability to significantly edit photos until recently required serious skills and serious investment. Professionals literally airbrushed photos with sprayers and paint. Lightening and darkening images involved dodging and burning negatives in a dark room in the analog world.
Even early digital editing required investments of both time and money. A program such as Adobe Photoshop had tremendous power, but the learning curve was steep.
Smartphones have changed things. They have democratized the creation of great photos… and Google, in my opinion, just pulled off a masterstroke.
Unlocking pro-level editing
Beyond “basic” photo editing, Google’s AI photo editing can remove unwanted objects and people, sharpen blurry photos, add smiles to grumpy people in group photos, and even add the photographer into group shots. This is a level of photo processing that was only accessible to Photoshop masters even a few years go.
But now? Much of this power is accessible via voice commands in the new Pixel 10. You merely have to say (or type) in the command to change things in the photo that irk, and they’re gone.
Also, don’t miss the other excellent element of the announcement. Google is now integrating C2PA content credentialing into its editing software. This is a technical standard that allows content creators to indelibly digitally label their work with how it was created and edited.
As a result, viewers can see a breadcrumb of how an image was altered, bringing trust at at time when AI is eroding such a thing in the medium at an astounding rate.
Now, even though I’m really impressed by this feature, don’t think I’m calling this the death of photo editing skills. For amateur photographers who want additional features and platform independence, Adobe Lightroom mobile is still a top-tier program that gives the photographer more precise control through sophisticated but accessible masking (although, unlike the programs included with the smartphones, Adobe Lightroom requires an additional charge).
For professional work or larger-format printing, the standard will still be taking photos on a camera and processing them on a desktop or laptop using programs such as Adobe Lightroom Classic or Topaz AI. The true art is still being preserved for now – there’s still a vast difference between a photo that’s altered with a quickly spoken request, and a picture that’s had hours of love poured into the tweaks.
For those that just enjoy photography on the go, the new Google Pixel 10 features are more than enough though. The highest level of resolution, sharpness, and control are still beyond the reach of smartphones…and that’s OK. For 99.9% of the world, 99.9% of the time, photography is about sharing our lives and looking good while doing it, and this launch from Google achieves a new level of impressiveness.
‘Yeah, me and Brad go way back…’
While I am excited by this capability, I still hope people use it properly. Social media has often been accused of encouraging people to create and share a fake, perfect version of their lives, and these tools could push us even further into the realm of fake images masquerading as real..
Brad Pitt at your birthday party? What’s stopping you? As the saying goes, “with great power comes great responsibility”.
I consider myself a fine art and landscape photographer. I give myself latitude to create an image that solely meets my goals for showing a scene. But if I were taking photos for a newspaper or even a hotel website, I would need to be much more scrupulous about accurately showing what a place or an event looks like.
This issue of what’s ‘real’ has been present for professional photographers for decades. Powerful AI-driven smartphone photography has pushed it into the hands of the average person. Are you capturing reality? Enhancing reality? Or stepping up to create a whole new reality?
