Google Photos is among the best Google apps available out there, thanks to its great sharing and cloud storage capabilities. Other than the regular features, Google also uses Photos as a platform to showcase its machine learning and AI prowess. The app has evolved significantly over the year, bringing a host of new features with each successive update. As of now, the app includes features that can recognize faces, landmarks and even subject matter, generate albums automatically, and create a variety of stylized photos. The app received a new "document crop" functionality earlier this year, allowing for better digitization of documents. And with the latest update, the app now has a manual document cropping extension.
As reported by Android Police, Google Photos now brings up a blue bubble highlighting the new document crop extension whenever you tap on the edit button. The button resides in the bottom right corner of the app and when selected, it brings up a free cropping interface. However, it doesn't suggest or automatically detect document borders.
On the plus side, the new function doesn't limit you to square or rectangular shapes like the normal crop function and it even has a zoomed-in view to help you select the document borders accurately. Once you've defined the border, you can tap on the Done button and Google Photos will automatically cut and straighten the image to make it look like a document.
As with all edits in Google Photos, any changes you make with this new extension are reversible and allow you to go back to the original image. It's worth noting that the new crop extension isn't limited to documents and you can use it on any image. This means that it'll allow you to easily correct the perspective of images, without putting in much effort.
The new feature appears to be part of Google Photos version 4.26 and is available on my Mi A3 following the latest update. The feature comes in at a crucial time when users are looking for alternatives to the CamScanner app which was recently caught injecting malware on devices.
Source: Android Police