The person behind the Google Pixel camera is creating a universal camera app for Adobe

Marc Levoy is the person who used software to create the incredible cameras Google Pixel became famous for. After recently leaving Google, Levoy joined Adobe and is working on a universal camera app.

At Google, Levoy headed the team the developed the computational photography technology that made the cameras on the Google Pixel one of the best in the industry. This tech included features like Night Sight, Portrait Mode and HDR+.

Levoy’s work also helped the Google Pixels take exceptional photos without requiring a tonne of hardware like multiple lenses. Just a camera on the Pixel was good enough to compete with the likes of the Apple iPhones and other top-of-the-line smartphones out there.

When the competition got a little tougher and people started looking for sharper zoom images, that’s when Google added a second telephoto lens to the Pixel and that happened as late as last year with the Pixel 4. In comparison, Apple first added a second camera to its stack on the iPhone 7 Plus back in 2016.

Now at Adobe, Levoy is working on making a great camera for all smartphone users, not just the Pixel. He is working on computational photography initiatives across Adobe and the company announced in an email that his efforts will centre around the “concept of a universal camera app”.

Adobe has not explained what exactly this ‘universal camera app’ is yet and this phrase has also been tied to an app platform that Facebook, Snapchat and others can use to create their own camera apps that will work across a smartphone and even a DSLR.

Adobe already has Photoshop Camera and there’s another camera app that’s built into the Adobe Lightroom app, so possibly, this universal camera app is a part of the company’s “grander vision” for camera apps in general.

The company said in its email that Levoy will be working with the Photoshop Camera, Adobe Research and Sensei AI teams, and going by that, Photoshop Camera is going to be his main focus.

Levoy left Google in March this year.