Google Photos bringing you a legal way to touch up people in public

Google Photos is going to add a feature it's calling "Touch Up", which will allow editing of facial features. The name appears to be derived from the use of makeup, rather than anything wholly inappropriate.

It's been a trend for many smartphone cameras – especially those coming out of China – to offer a wide range of "beatification" features, allowing for minor changes to facial appearance, not too dissimilar to applying makeup. This mild touching up ranges from minor alterations to the shape of the face or eyes, to skin smoothing.

It appears that Google is now going to add Touch Up options to Google Photos too, according to details dug up by Android Authority. The new feature will mean that users will be able to tweak their looks after the photo is taken, rather than it being a filter that's applied at the time the photo is taken.

The Touch Up feature will sit in the Actions tab of the edit section in Google Photos and it will offer Smooth, Under Eyes, Irises, Teeth, Eyebrows and Lips. Each will open with a slider, allowing users to make changes, similar to the rest of Google's editing options.

To be fair to Google, this is about tweaking rather than making yourself look entirely different. The eyes option for example changes the brightness of your eyes rather than the shape; the lips section changes the tone of the lips; the under eyes section removes dark circles – and let's be honest, we're all going to use that to hide the effects of overindulgence the night before.

The new Touch Up feature will allow editing of individual faces in a group, so if you've taken a photo next to someone flawless and you're an absolute mess, there's something you can do about it.

It also means that girls can smooth their face, leaving men with their mature wrinkles, rather than looking like they have the face of a baby. Group Touch Up will support up to six faces in a photo.

Google Photos remains one of the best uses of AI in a smartphone. While translation and summaries are everywhere, it's the editing power in photos that are really useful. That's moved from basic removal of unwanted objects in an image, to complete creative reimagining.

The addition of Touch Up will expand the feature set, but at the moment, this is still a work in progress. There's no word on when it might be released, but it's expected to be soon.