Google shows off Auto Enhance and Highlights photo-editing tools for Google+ (update: video)

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Google shows off Auto Enhance and Highlights photo-editing tools for Google+ (update: video)

Hot on the heels of folding photo storage in with Gmail and Google+, Google is showing off two photo-editing tools for G+ called Auto Enhance and Highlights. Starting with Auto Enhance, this is clearly the fruit of Google's eight-month-old Snapseed acquisition: with this feature you can do things like adjust for exposure, soften skin, minimize wrinkles, remove red-eye and reduce noise in low-light shots. Additionally, there's a bunch of so-called auto-awesome tools: collage, HDR, panorama and smile. A fifth auto-awesome feature, 'Motion,' creates GIFs when it detects a series of shots taken at the same place and time. And don't worry: you can easily switch back to the untouched original, so there's no need to worry about giving Google too much control.

Highlights, meanwhile, takes the sting out of album creation by automatically selecting your best photos and setting aside your not-so-good ones. This means pruning for duplicates and blurry shots, while favoring ones with smiling faces and accurate exposure. You'll find some samples in the gallery below, but why settle for examples when you can play around using your own photos? Both features are rolling out to Google+ today, so fire up your browser if you feel like giving them a try. Oh, and while you can upload up to 15GB of full-size photos (per that new storage policy), downsized pics don't count toward that storage limit, so long as they're smaller than 2,048 pixels.

Update: Google's posted a video overview of the new photo features, which we've embedded just past the break.

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Source: Google

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