Advanced video editing for Google Photos is finally rolling out

Google One just got a lot more important.

Update, Apr 12 (11:45 am ET): New video editor is rolling out on Google Photos

What you need to know

• Google has improved Google Photos editing capabilities.
• It’s rolling out a new video editor to all Android users.
• Google is also releasing Pixel-exclusive features to non-Pixel users under a Google One paywall.

Google last year rolled out a slew of Pixel exclusive editing features to Google Photos on Android. If you had a Pixel 4a or a Pixel 5, Google’s AI would be able to apply select tweaks to your photos based on whether the subject was a person or a landscape.

Now, the company is making them available to non-Pixel owners — for a fee. You’ll need to have Google One access to try out some of these features as Google announced back in 2020. These include the new Portrait Blur and Portrait Lighting tools, as well as the ML-powered suggestions. You’ll need to have an Android phone with 3GB of RAM running Android 8.0 and above, but as even cheap Android phones meet that requirement nowadays, it shouldn’t be too onerous.

In addition to that, Google today finally made a revamped Google Photos video editor available to Android. It’s bringing more than 30 controls for users who want to tweak their videos after they’ve shot them. As far as upgrades go, it’s a useful tool for Pixel 5 users, especially after Google worked on improving video support with new shooting modes in the camera app.

Writing in a blog post, the Google Photos team said:

With the new video editor, in addition to trimming, stabilizing and rotating your videos, you’ll now be able to crop, change perspective, add filters, apply granular edits (including brightness, contrast, saturation and warmth) and more.

While the new video editor is welcome, the Google One subscription requirement is likely to be controversial. With Google One also being necessary to store vast amounts of photos (unless you’re a Pixel owner), it seems that you’ll need a Google One subscription to get the most out of Google Photos.

Update, Apr 12 (11:45 am ET) ― New video editor for Google Photos is rolling out now

Google has started rolling out its new video editor for Google Photos. As mentioned in the original post, the editor comes with a host of new features such as trimming, stabilizing, cropping, and adjusting various attributes like contrast, highlights, and more.

Android phones with the latest version of Google Photos should have access to the new editor, but it may take some time before it appears on everyone’s devices. For additional help on how to use these features, you can follow our guide on how to use the new Google Photos editor.