The man who made the Pixel camera so good joins Adobe

The man who made the Pixel camera so good joins Adobe and already has a task to complete

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Marc Levoy, the man behind the well-regarded Pixel cameras, left Google last March. His hard work on computational photography allowed Google to turn the Pixel into a well-regarded camera-phone even though it had only one 12MP camera in the era of multiple camera setups (until the Pixel 4 series, that is). Under Levoy, Google was able to add features such as HDR+, Portrait Mode, and Night Sight. He also worked on the Google Glass Explorer Edition before joining Google full time.

Today, Adobe has announced (via The Verge) that Levoy is joining the company to build a universal camera app based on his forte, computational photography. The Adobe Photoshop Camera app obviously features a camera and includes different lenses and filters. The universal camera app could be based on the aforementioned app but with more features. By the way, if you're interested in checking out Adobe Photoshop Camera, you can find it in the App Store for your iOS device, and in the Google Play Store for your Android powered device. As one user of the app mentioned, "like every other camera app I’ve tried, I find that nothing beats the image quality of the native camera app." This person's review of the Adobe Photoshop Camera said that it is okay for editing, not for shooting.

Improving the app's camera could be a task for Levoy; after all, Adobe says that Levoy will be part of the Photoshop Camera, Adobe Research, and Sensei AI teams. He will be reporting to the firm's Chief Technical Officer and today was his first day working for Adobe.

You might recall that Levoy hosted a video during last year's Pixel 4 unveiling that revealed the story behind the creation of HDR+. At the time, we noted that Levoy sounded like a professor (he was one at Stanford) and has the gift of explaining complex things in a way that even that a layman can understand them. We look forward to seeing what kind of magic he will be able to pull off at Adobe.