The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2021–2022
Google Real Tone lets Pixel 6 photograph skin tones accurately — D&AD Black Pencil 2022
Google rebuilt Pixel 6's camera and Google Photos with photographers of color, so darker skin tones photograph accurately — and made that equity the campaign.
What it had to solve
Historically, camera technology has not accurately represented darker skin tones — photos come out over-brightened, desaturated or washed out, because the datasets and algorithms that train cameras were built mostly on lighter skin. Google wanted the Pixel 6, its first Tensor-powered phone, to fix this at the product level.
How it works
For decades, camera technology has been built and tested mostly on lighter skin, with the result that darker skin tones photograph as over-brightened, desaturated or washed out. Google acknowledged the problem and made it the centerpiece of the Pixel 6 launch, the first phone powered by its Tensor chip.
The approach was to fix the tools at the data level. Google's teams worked with photographers, cinematographers and colorists known for accurate imagery of people of color — including Kira Kelly, Deun Ivory and Adrienne Raquel — to diversify the portraits used to train face detection, auto-white balance and auto-exposure models, and developed an algorithm that stops stray light from washing out darker skin.
The result, called Real Tone, shipped inside the Pixel 6 camera and Google Photos: better-exposed, sharper portraits across skin tones, with auto-enhance that no longer flattens dark skin. The story was told through social channels, editorial partnerships, a Super Bowl spot and a New York Times Advertising collaboration.
The experts rated Pixel 6 best for people of color among top smartphones in a device-agnostic survey, and D&AD gave Real Tone its 2022 Black Pencil for Product Design — recognition that equity engineering could be the headline product feature.
Why it lands
- Google attacked the bias at its source — training data and algorithms — instead of adding a superficial filter, so the fix lived in every photo.
- The company brought the people the technology failed into the process as collaborators, not just as test subjects.
- Making equity the launch story turned a moral commitment into the phone's most distinctive competitive feature.
- The work fed a longer product-inclusion mission, extending to tools like automatic lighting in Google Meet and more inclusive skin-tone research.
What it did
In a device-agnostic survey, the collaborating experts rated Pixel 6's rendering of skin tone, brightness, depth and detail best among top smartphones for people of color. Real Tone won the D&AD 2022 Black Pencil for Product Design, and image equity became the launch's defining narrative — the fix itself was the campaign.
What you can take
Fix the product for the people it fails, with those people in the room: diversifying the data and expert feedback didn't just improve fairness — it became the launch's most distinctive story.
Since then
Real Tone launched with Pixel 6 in October 2021 and became the phone's signature story, carried into a 2022 Super Bowl spot. It won the D&AD 2022 Black Pencil for Product Design and helped establish image equity as a mainstream product category. Google extended the same mission to automatic lighting adjustments in Google Meet and to research on more inclusive ways to handle skin tone in AI systems across its products and the industry.
Sources
- Real Tone — D&AD Awards Archive
- Image equity: Making image tools more fair for everyone
- Pixel 6's camera combines hardware, software and ML
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