Google’s Portrait Light editing feature is rolling out to older Pixel phones

One of the headline features of the new Pixel phones release was a new editing feature for selfies called Portrait Light. At the time we were told by Google that it would arriving on older Pixels soon and it seems soon is here with reports of it rolling out to older Pixels filtering out.

Portrait Light is actually a feature built into Google Photos and according to Android Police, it is arriving on Pixel 2, 3 and 4 phones. Portrait Light works by recognising a face in the photo and allowing the user to adjust the perceived light source on the image — Google used the example of when there is a bright background the faces are dark, this can be changed now using Portrait Light. The features uses Google’s AI and can thus be used on any photo taken at any time, with any device.

To check if you have the feature open Google Photos app, then a photo with a face in it then Adjust and Portrait Light. You can use the “dot” on the image to adjust where you want the light to come from. The intensity of the effect can be adjusted as well or you can have it be totally automated by Google with the auto selection.

The new feature appears to be rolling out via a server side switch but just in case make sure you are on the latest version of Google Photos. We have noticed it on a couple of our older Pixel phones so hopefully it will be on yours too. If it is available for you let us know below and start working on improving all of your old portrait images.