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Touching up selfies to fix blemishes and change your look has been an option for decades, but new tools within Google Photos may make those edits faster and easier to control on mobile.
They’re part of seven new “touch-up tools” for the image editor. According to Google, you can use these to "refine skin texture, remove blemishes, brighten eyes or whiten teeth in seconds.”
The tools recognize faces and allow you to edit individual people at a time. To try it out, select a photo with a face, then head to Edit > Actions > Touch up, represented by a small face logo. Within this menu, you’ll find options for heal, smooth, under eyes, irises, teeth, eyebrows, or lips.
Heal lets you use a pen-like tool to cover blemishes you may not like in the original photo. Other tools, like teeth or lips, let you adjust levels from zero to 100, much like the brand's filter or color controls, either whitening your teeth or darkening your lips.
These features are designed to be as frictionless as possible, making edits easier by recognizing each individual part of the face and suggesting edits you may like to see. These options also let you be more granular in your controls than when asking AI-powered tools to make changes to a photo.
The feature is coming to Android, but it's not on every device yet; we couldn't find the tools on an up-to-date Pixel 9. Google says it’ll be coming to other devices gradually, and you’ll need 4GB of RAM and Android 9 or later to use it. There's no official word on whether these touch-up tools will be added to the iOS version of Google Photos.