Stephen Schenck / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google introduced a new editing UI for Photos on Android this past summer.
- One casualty of that update was Photos losing its perspective correction tool.
- Perspective correction is now back, as well as the old look for the cropping interface.
Google giveth, and Google taketh away. As Android users, we’re free to explore all the third-party software solutions we want, but if you largely operate within the confines of Google’s ecosystem, that’s going to mean accepting that the features you have access to at any given time are there at Google’s discretion. And while normally updates tend to just make its apps better, and even more feature-rich, occasionally Google does kill off some useful functionality in the process. The good news is that changes can always be rolled back, and today we get confirmation of the return of one tool a lot of us have been missing.
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This past summer, Google brought Photos on Android a new editing experience. And it was new, and different, and we heard a lot of complaints from people struggling to get used to it. But while most of the functionality was still there, just shuffled around a bit, it didn’t take long to notice that Google had removed the ability to perform perspective correction on images. After a long wait, today Google confirms that it’s finally back.
Google’s been promising the return of this tool for a few months now, and just two weeks ago we brought you an early preview of how perspective correction would be coming back. When you can’t quite get the head-on shot you’re looking for, this offers a handy way to fix things after the fact — or just intentionally distort perspective for artistic effect.
AssembleDebug / Android Authority
In addition to the return of perspective edits, Google also announces another little Photos tweak that you may have already noticed from our earlier preview: Check out the boundaries of the crop tool there. In case you’ve already forgotten, Google swapped those squared-off ones for rounded corner brackets with this year’s revised editor:
For the last few months, that’s the look we’ve had, over on the left. But with perspective correction coming back, it brings those nice, square corners along with it.
We’re already seeing the new look and functionality in Photos on our devices, so check yours today and get back to fixing all those messed-up perspectives.
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