Skin tone representation with Real Tone photography
Real Tone
Portraits on Pixel represent the nuances of different skin tones for all people, beautifully and authentically.
What is Real Tone?
Google’s mission is to make our camera and image products work more equitably for everyone. Historically, camera technology has excluded people of color, resulting in unflattering photos for those with darker skin tones. We improved our camera tuning models and algorithms to more accurately highlight diverse skin tones with Real Tone software.
How Real Tone helps.
We focused on six core areas to make Pixel our most inclusive camera.
Recognize a broader set of faces
To make a great portrait, your phone first has to see a face in the picture. So, we trained our face detector models to “see” more diverse faces in more lighting conditions.
Correctly represent skin color in pictures
Auto-white balance models help determine color in a picture. Our partners helped us hone these models to better reflect a variety of skin tones.
Make skin brightness appear more natural
Similarly, we made changes to our auto-exposure tuning to balance brightness and ensure your skin looks like you – not unnaturally brighter or darker.
Reduce washed-out images
Stray light shining in an image can make darker skin tones look washed out, so we developed an algorithm to reduce its negative effects in your pictures.
Sharpen images even in low light
Getting a sharp portrait in dim light shouldn’t depend on how you look, so we significantly cut down image blur for people with darker skin tones in
.More ways to tune up any photo
Our experts also helped us improve Google Photos’
— so you can achieve a beautiful, representative photo regardless of when you took the photo, or which device you used.
Wakandans in Real Tone
Ebony magazine used Real Tone to feature the stars of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever on its digital cover.
Wakandans in Real Tone
Ebony magazine used Real Tone to feature the stars of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever on its digital cover.
Wakandans in Real Tone
Ebony magazine used Real Tone to feature the stars of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever on its digital cover.
Wakandans in Real Tone
Ebony magazine used Real Tone to feature the stars of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever on its digital cover.
Building with the community
Building with the community
Shaniqwa Jarvis
We teamed up with the portrait artist to capture the players in the 2022 NBA HBCU match-up using Pixel’s Real Tone capabilities.
Kennedi Carter
Mengwen Cao
Ricardo Nagaoka
#SeenOnPixel
The most advanced and inclusive Pixel camera yet
The most advanced and inclusive Pixel camera yet
