Skin tone representation with Real Tone photography

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.

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.

Similarly, we made changes to our auto-exposure tuning to balance brightness and ensure your skin looks like you – not unnaturally brighter or darker.

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.

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

Our experts also helped us improve Google Photos’

We teamed up with the portrait artist to capture the players in the 2022 NBA HBCU match-up using Pixel’s Real Tone capabilities. 

The celebrated photographer, who explores themes of creativity and confidence in the realm of Blackness, puts the world’s most inclusive camera to the test.

The artist’s photography explores how queer and BIPOC people can be depicted more clearly. Photographed with Real Tone on Google Pixel 6.

The artist uses Google’s Real Tone technology to reflect the depth of Asian Americans, here at home on the range.