Google's Pixel 7 cameras focus on 'accessible creativity' with impressive new features

June Wan/ZDNET

In the smartphone industry, it's commonly held that you should buy the Google Pixel for its computational photography and post-processing prowess. The hardware is secondary. 

Real-time image processing and HDR+ are still the bread and butter of the Pixel camera experience, but it's the side dishes like Photo Unblur, Guided Frame, and Magic Eraser that will resonate with most users -- professional or not. And Google continues to bet on making the most inclusive cameras in the business. One example is putting its machine learning to work in optimizing for a wide variety of skin tones. But there are other examples, too.

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Instead, Sarma and team lean into the idea of one-tap capture, a series of user-friendly tools and features for every shooting scenario. 

Creating such a flexible smartphone camera was what excited Sarma to scale the Pixel experience. "We aren't catering to a specific demographic with the Pixel camera. The general philosophy is that if you have anyinclination to take a picture, then this camera's for you." Night Sight and Top Shot are among the tools that Sarma categorizes as "accessible creativity".

Finding light in pervasive problems

Accessible creativity extends to Photo Unblur, Magic Eraser, and Portrait Light, features that are somewhat different than the real-time settings within the Google Camera app. Instead of guiding your shooting experience, they're found in the Photos app, created to correct the past, doubling as a safety net for bad photos. It is in this area where Google's AI and machine learning really come to play.

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