Pixel Camera Looks: Google Sticks the Landing ⭐

The Photographic Styles feature in the iPhone Camera app is a crime against humanity, a ponderously stupid interface that's too difficult to configure and painfully easy to wipe out by mistake. So when Google announced a new Pixel Camera app feature called Camera Looks, I was both hopeful and nervous. After all, Apple is routinely lauded for its user interfaces, and Google, well, is not.

Well then. That reality makes this new feature all the better. Because not only is Camera Looks better than Apple's Photographic Styles--granted, a low bar--it's also an excellent interface, dare I say the right interface for controlling the look and feel of the photos you take. It is both simple and effective, and it can be customized easily. This should energize Pixel fans and embarrass Apple. Which, come to think of it, should energize Pixel fans even more.

Google has touted the computational photography prowess of its Pixel phones since the beginning, and I still fondly recall the incredible Marc Levoy presentation during the Pixel 4 series launch event in 2019 as a high-water mark of a well-spoken expert explaining a technical topic in plain English. (Levoy has since taken his talents to Adobe, where he helped create the intriguing Project Indigo camera app for iPhone, which is only held back, ironically, by the Apple policies that prevent third parties from accessing the full power of the iPhone hardware.)

But I've always thought of this situation in simpler terms: Yes, you can take excellent photos with an iPhone, but you really have to work at it, dive deep into the settings, and then babysit the thing every time you take a shot. By comparison, you will always take excellent photos with a Pixel. Every. Single. Time.

This Pixel behavior is the result of a few things. The aforementioned computational photography expertise. Google's desire is that Pixel be "the helpful phone" in every way imaginable. And Apple's meddlesome "we know better than you" mentality, which, among other things, has resulted in "Think Different" interfaces like the bubbles UI on Apple Watch and Photographic Styles on iPhone that make absolutely no sense at all. Google copies Apple all over the place and vice versa, but Google also knows when to just ignore the stupidest of Apple's software mistakes.

The first time you launch the Pixel Camera app on any Pixel 11 series phone, Google displays a "Before you start" overlay with a "Choose a Camera Look" item right at the top.

When you tap this item, Google displays a carousel of diverse photos with the "Original" style selected. Original, as noted, is not the raw image seen through the viewfinder but is instead "the original Pixel look," meaning it's crisp and optimized for the everyday use for which Pixel is celebrated. In the past, I described the stock Pixel Camera style to be a happy medium between the dull, flat, and lifeless stock photos you get with iPhone and the overly-saturated and processed look you...