The camera on the new Pixel 2 is packed full of great hardware, software and machine learning (ML), so all you need to do is point and shoot to take amazing photos and videos. One of the technologies that helps you take great photos is HDR+, which makes it possible to get excellent photos of scenes with a large range of brightness levels, from dimly lit landscapes to a very sunny sky.

HDR+ produces beautiful images, and we’ve evolved the algorithm that powers it over the past year to use the Pixel 2’s application processor efficiently, and enable you to take multiple pictures in sequence by intelligently processing HDR+ in the background. In parallel, we’ve also been working on creating hardware capabilities that enable significantly greater computing power—beyond existing hardware—to bring HDR+ to third-party photography applications.

To expand the reach of HDR+, handle the most challenging imaging and ML applications, and deliver lower-latency and even more power-efficient HDR+ processing, we’ve created Pixel Visual Core.

Pixel Visual Core is Google’s first custom-designed co-processor for consumer products. It’s built into every Pixel 2, and in the coming months, we’ll turn it on through a software update to enable more applications to use Pixel 2’s camera for taking HDR+ quality pictures.

