Some keen code observers have noticed the past few months that Google Photos seems to be preparing to hide some of its features behind a paywall. Now we’re seeing the first official manifestation of this but it’s not exactly the paid feature that some were expecting. The color pop feature, one of the more popular editing features on the app, seems to be “hidden” behind a Google One subscription. But there are still some instances when you can use it even without the subscription.
XDA Developers previously published an APK teardown of Google Photos 5.18 which shows that they’re working on a paywall for some of the photo editing features. That turns out to be not something you’ll have to pay extra directly but you will need a Google One subscription to access it. Some users have reported that when they tried to use the color pop feature, they are promoted to sign up for the Google One plan, which can cost as low as $2.99 per month.
Google clarified that the Google One “paywall” for the color pop feature is only applicable for photos that don’t have depth information. But it is still free to use and with no additional cost whatsoever, not even a Google One subscription for the photos like portrait mode that have depth information. But Google One members can apply the feature to more photos of people they clarified and it is part of an “ongoing rollout”.
If you’re not familiar, color pop allows you to turn the background of your photo to black and white so the focal image will pop. You can also do vice versa with your image in black and white and everything else in color. It’s become a popular editing feature ever since Google Photos introduced it two years ago. So they’re probably considering it an advanced feature and one worthy of a paywall of sorts.
What is also unclear at this point is if Google Photos will also be adding more of its features to this Google One subscribers only kind of paywall but this is highly likely. There may be upcoming features like preprocessing suggestions and a Skypallette feature that may or may not be free to use for everyone.
