Adobe has hired Marc Levoy, the computer photography pioneer who led the development of innovative technologies found in Google’s Pixel smartphones. Levoy will now bring his expertise to help Adobe develop a “universal camera app.”
Levoy became a professor of computer science at Stanford in 1990, focusing on computer graphics and vision. It would continue to make significant contributions in the fields of light field cameras and computational photography.
In 2011, Levoy said goodbye to Stanford and helped Google develop Project Glass, the augmented reality camera glasses that impressed the press but failed to establish themselves in real-world applications.
In 2014, Levoy retired from Stanford and started working full time as a distinguished engineer at Google, where he helped develop the main features of the Pixel smartphone camera, including HDR +, Portrait Mode (single camera) and Night Sight (for handheld shots in low light situations).
Levoy left Google in March of this year, and is now joining Adobe as vice president and member, reporting directly to CTO Abhay Parasnis.
“Marc will spearhead company-wide technology initiatives focused on computational photography and emerging products, focused on the concept of a universal camera application,” Adobe tells PetaPixel. “In this role, he will work closely with the Photoshop Camera, Adobe Research, Sensei and Digital Imaging teams.”
Adobe wants to play an important role in the future of photography, but by capturing photos and editing them, and believes that Levoy is an expert and visionary who can take it there.
“[Levoy] will help Adobe reimagine what computational photography can be, expanding the company’s heritage of world-class photography and image editing tools like Photoshop and Lightroom to help drive its technology agenda in editing, capturing, camera, and more. ” says the company.
Image credits: Fkainz headline portrait and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
