Have you ever taken a photo on your phone, only to look back later and wonder where all the life went? I’ve seen people ask why their newer smartphone photos look dull and sterile compared to their older phone, and the answer mainly lies in how phones process photos these days.
Google seems to have heard everyone’s cries and implemented a new feature on the Pixel 11 series called Camera Looks. These looks are more than a plain filter; they change how color science works and how shadows are calculated when you take a photo, leading to a result you’ll hopefully like better.
What are Camera Looks?
To understand what Camera Looks does to your photos, you first have to understand how modern smartphone photography works. Unlike a “normal” camera, modern smartphones don’t just take one picture when you tap the shutter button. Instead, your Pixel phone constantly takes pictures while the camera viewfinder is open; it just doesn’t store them until you tap the shutter button.
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The moment you press the shutter button, your Pixel saves roughly five photos taken before you press it, plus another five taken during and slightly after. Each photo is taken at different exposure values — meaning some photos are darker while others are brighter — to ensure the camera captures the widest range of light in an image. All this happens in less than a split second.
Your Pixel then takes those photos and combines them into a single picture at the pixel level. If you’ve ever taken a photo and then immediately tapped the thumbnail to see your shot, you’ve probably seen the picture “pop” into place and look a lot better after a second or two. This is the result of what Google calls HDR+.
While brightening the shadows and reducing the brightest parts of the photos might be technically excellent, it doesn’t look “correct” to our eyes. After years of developing HDR+ into the industry’s most technically advanced photo-processing software, Google is letting users pull back on the proverbial reins if they want to.
Google calls this extra control “Camera Looks,” and it gives users a quick, easy way to make the Pixel camera look and work the way they want. You can reduce or enhance any specific processing parameters, including sharpening, shadows, vibrance, tinting, and more.
Camera Looks aren’t “filters.” Each look changes how the photo is processed when taken and delivers a different end look. A filter is something applied to a photo after it’s taken, while Camera Looks changes the entire processing pipeline.
How to use Camera Looks on a Pixel 11
Camera Looks is supported on all Pixel 11 series phones, including the base Pixel 11, the Pixel 11 Pro, Pixel 11 Pro XL, and Pixel 11 Pro Fold. Google hasn’t ported this feature to older Pixel phones yet, as Camera Looks currently runs at the hardware level on the Tensor G6’s ISP.
Camera Looks is a simple feature on the surface, but it also lets power users dive into more granular settings. Here’s how to apply basic Camera Looks to your photos:
1. Open the camera app. You can also double-press the power button to quickly launch the camera.
2. Tap the Settings Sliders button on the bottom right of the viewfinder.
3. Tap on the Looks button on the bottom left of the viewfinder.
4. The viewfinder will now transform into a series of cards. At the top, tap the dropdown next to “default look” and select your desired base processing style.
5. You can also swipe through the Camera Looks cards to choose from 7 different preset options.
Setting your look as the default
By default, you’ll need to tap the Camera Looks button every time you reopen the camera. Google does this to make “normal” photo-taking easy, but you can also set your preferred camera look as the default when you open the camera. To do that, follow these steps:
1. Open the camera app.
2. Tap the photo settings icon on the bottom left. It looks like a gear.
3. Tap the More button on the top right of the pop-up. It looks like three dots.
4. Scroll down and enable Always use selected look.
Now, when you open your Pixel’s camera, the Camera Look you previously configured will always be enabled. To disable it, just tap the Camera Look button on the bottom right, then swipe through the cards to select another look.
Getting the most out of Camera Looks
While the carousel of cards is a quick way to get some nice presets, Camera Looks lets you dial in eight different properties of the Pixel’s photography engine and adjust them in granular detail. When you open Camera Looks, you’ll see a row of buttons along the bottom for individual settings. Here’s what each one does:
Contrast (-10 to +10): The difference between the image’s brightest and darkest parts. Increase this number to create starker darks and lights, and lower it to make the image gentler.
Highlights (-10 to +10): This refers to the brightest parts of a photo, usually something like sunlight coming through a window, a reflection in glass, etc. Increase this number to brighten highlights, and decrease it to reduce them.
Shadows (-10 to +10): This setting affects the darkest parts of a photo. Increasing this number brightens all the dark parts in an image. Decreasing this number will make the darker parts even darker, resulting in higher-contrast scenes.
Vibrance (-10 to +10): This setting affects color intensity. Higher vibrance settings make colors “pop” but can look unrealistic or cartoony at too-high settings. Lower settings make colors look duller.
Tint (-10 to +10): Adjusts how green or magenta an image is. Higher numbers skew the image toward a more magenta tone, while lower numbers make the image look greener.
Warmth (-10 to +10): Adjusts how blue or yellow an image is. Higher numbers skew the image toward yellow, or warmer colors, while lower numbers skew the image toward blue, or cooler tones.
Sharpness (0 to 15): This refers to how much artificial sharpening is added to a photo. Digital photography often uses sharpening to make photos look “high resolution” by enhancing fine detail, but an image that’s too sharp looks noticeably fake and often “harsh.”
Grain (None/Weak/Moderate/Strong): Adds an artificial grain look to photos. This differs from digital noise, a by-product of how digital photo sensors work. The grain setting does not enhance fine detail. It only adds a grain filter.
Feel free to play with each of these settings to find the look you want. If you don’t like the look of stock Pixel photos, I suggest adjusting three settings right away: shadows, vibrance, and sharpness.
Try dropping the shadows a notch or two and see if you like the look. I think the preset “Shadows” Look (found in the drop-down menu at the top of the viewfinder when Camera Looks is enabled) already does a good job of adjusting this setting.
When you’re done with that, try giving vibrance a little punch-up. Start with +2 and adjust from there. That, combined with shadow darkening, should give your Pixel photos a nice pop. Lastly, try reducing sharpness just a bit by bringing it down to 8 (the default is 10). This will reduce sharpening, making the photo look more like film and less digital.