Google Photos' new trick turns snaps into film frames
Moods uses AI-powered colour edits to give existing photos a retro, digicam-style vibe
Google Photos wants your camera roll to look like it came off a roll of actual film. The app is rolling out a new feature called Moods, which applies AI-powered colour edits to existing photos with a single tap, leaning heavily into the retro and digicam aesthetics that have taken over social media.
The Moods filter can be found inside the Create tab in Google Photos, among other AI-powered tools. Instead of adding a uniform filter to the picture, this filter examines the lighting and colours of the picture and then applies an edit based on these particular aspects.
The icon of this feature looks like a roll of film, implying the style that the company wants to achieve, a film photography style.
The current number of moods available in Google Photos is eight. The first two, Airy Minimalist and Crisp 35mm, have an emphasis on clean and classic colours, while 2000’s Cinema and Rich Textures have a cinematic colour grading effect with texture applied.
The remaining two presets, Pink Digicam and Retro Contrast, provide users with the ability to bring back the colours of point-and-shoot cameras from the early 2000s. As for the last two presets, they are designed for night-time photography.
APKMirrorArtem Russakovskii was one of the early users to have access to the feature, with screenshots of the presets and intensity sliders on X.
The vice-president of Google Photos, Shimrit Ben-Yair, confirmed through her reply that Moods would be available to all users around the world on Android and iOS, although users on Android would get it earlier than the iOS users. Google does not provide an exact date.
Moods arrives as Google Photos leans further into one-tap AI tools, following recent additions like Ask Photos and expanded metadata editing.
