Digital makeup in the spotlight: Google wants to narrow it down

Mobile phones have become the photography tool par excellence, especially among adolescents. Selfies are one of the culprits, especially in countries like Spain, the European country where these types of photos are most taken.

And in recent years we have seen processing and retouching tools become popular to unsustainable extremes. Various studies suggest that users are carried away by a perfect, unreal beauty, achieved through manipulations of software.

Now, some mobile firms have begun to position themselves to minimize the use of these actions. Google, for example, has announced that although it will let users activate the beauty filters on their Pixels, it will leave them off by default.

Changing the language of digital makeup

In addition, the way you refer to the different settings of it will change. Instead of beauty mode, for example, it will call it Subtle, in reference to the modifications that will be made to the photo. Another more aggressive will be called Soft.

According to Google, the language used for this type of retouching, such as Beauty, Perfection and the like, suggests that if we do not resemble that we are wrong.

This approach from Google is not new and in July they were already talking about how they wanted to limit the application of these effects in Android 11.

At the moment these options will change in the Pixel 4a, 4a 5G and 5, but we hope that soon the rest of the manufacturers will do the same. Similarly, leaving them off by default also seems like a good decision, allowing a user to activate it if they want but not making them active by default.

These types of movements are accelerating as many users, especially the younger ones, begin to have beauty ideals marked by these filters.

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