While there are plenty of video editing tools built into smartphones, it can take some skill to pull off an edit that’s pleasing to the eye. But Google Photos looks set to change that.
By digging into an upcoming version of the Photos app, Android Authority contributor and code-diver Assemble Debug found a feature called “Enhance your videos”, and with a bit of work, got it up and running. As one would guess from the name, the feature is used to enhance videos accessed via the Photos app in a single tap.
Enhance your videos can automatically adjust brightness, contrast, color saturation and other visual parameters for a selected video in order to deliver an edited version that should look better than the original, at least in the eyes of Google.
While this feature isn’t official yet, it may be somewhat familiar to Google Photos users, as there’s already an option to enhance photos in the web and mobile versions of the service. In my experience, the enhance option works rather well, though it’s far from perfect and can overbake its enhancements.
But it makes sense for Google to extend this enhancement function to videos, especially in the TikTok era; do go and check out the TechRadar TikTok for news, views and reactions to the latest tech.
One neat thing about Enhance your video, according to Android Authority, is that all the processing happens on-device, thereby bypassing the need for an internet connection and cloud-based processing. Whether this will work on older phones without AI-centric chipsets remains to be seen.
Given that Assemble Debug got the Enhance your video feature up and running, it looks like it could be nearing an official rollout. We can expect to hear more about this and other upcoming Google features, as well as Android 15, at Google I/O 2024, which is set to kick off on May 14.