Google+ has been quite possibly the fastest growing social network in history, largely thanks in part to all of the unique services Google includes with the social networking site. Since launching in only June of 2011, Google+ has grown to be the second largest social networking site, and is quickly catching up to the declining Facebook every month. Google’s commitment to being the best services company around is only being further solidified by their constant updating of the services, and just this year alone we’ve seen additions like Hangouts, Auto Awesome Photos, auto hashtags, a complete interface redesign using their card UI and more. Even with all this updating and pure awesomeness, Google isn’t content with resting on their laurels like some other social networks out there, but is announcing a new feature today. Following their Snapseed acquisition in September of last year, Google has finally started to make some real implementations of that technology, and today’s update brings all new photo editing functionality to the table. For those that have used Google’s Picasa in the past, you’ll be familiar with the style of tools and the interface of the new photo editing found within Google+.
As you can see from the screenshot above, there are a number of tools you can choose from to give your photo cool filters and effects. Since there are plenty of other services out there that already have excellent filters like Instagram, Google had to take it one step further to make the service unique. That’s where the editing tools come in, particularly the selective adjust ones. Selective adjust tools allow you to choose a certain part of a picture, say the sky or a building, and adjust parameters of an image only on that selection. Things like exposure, blurring, center focus and more are all at your disposal as of this most recent Google+ update. Best of all you can do all of this in the browser or the mobile app according to Google’s own post about the update on Google+. Google already automatically backs up your photos and will “Auto Awesome” them, as Google calls it. Since Auto Awesome is an automatic image processing tool, adjusting things like sharpness, colors and exposure, these tools will give you a more fine-tuned manual approach. Google will be rolling these out soon, so keep an eye out for the update as it gets pushed out. In the meantime check out the neat little video below that Google put together showing all the awesome new features.