Google Photos is reimagining Magic Editor controls to make more sense

Key Takeaways

• Google Photos is updating its Magic Editor with clearer tools for inserting and replacing objects.
• The new UI in v7.6 will feature separate Replace and Insert buttons for easier photo editing.
• The upcoming update aims to simplify the "Reimagine" feature, making it more user-friendly and understandable.

Google Photos introduced a new Magic Editor feature with the Pixel 9 series that lets you "reimagine" photos, adding things to or replacing things in existing images. The tool has drawn mixed reactions, furthering the ongoing debate about what constitutes a photograph and prompting some well-reasoned hand-wringing about the potential ramifications of such powerful, easy-to-use photo editing tools.

A future Google Photos update looks to make the reimagine tool easier to understand and use. Android Authority reports that Google Photos v7.6 will come with an updated Magic Editor UI that introduces separate tools for inserting and replacing objects, a shift from the broader, more opaque "Reimagine" language used in the current iteration.

In the existing version of Google Photos' Magic Editor interface, you can draw over a photo to select a portion of it to surface options to "Erase" or "Reimagine" the area you selected. If you choose the latter option, you'll see a text box with a prompt that begins with "Reimagine as." The language is evocative, but it's not very clear; you're not really "reimagining" an empty spot in the sky when you plop an AI-generated bird into it.

Once Photos v7.6 hits, AA reports, the Reimagine button that currently appears when you select a portion of a photo will be replaced by two separate buttons labeled "Replace" and "Insert." Tapping Replace will surface a text box that begins with "Insert;" Replace will bring up a box that begins "Replace with." In contrast to the more nebulous "Reimagine as" language, Insert and Replace are much easier to understand at a glance.

The update will also add a feature that selects a photo's background in one tap. That'll bring up the same "Reimagine as" text box as the reimagine tool does today. I think reimagining the background of an image to make it look like your dog is on the moon is easier to understand as a concept than reimagining, say, the top of its head to add an AI-generated hat, though. These are all solid UI improvements.

Likely coming in Google Photos v7.6

Android Authority discovered this new interface in a teardown of the current Google Photos APK file. The fact that AA was able to get the new UI up and running (as seen in the video above) seems to indicate that the updated Magic Editor is coming soon — presumably in Google Photos' next update, which should be v7.6.

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