Google Photos
Google Photos is a complete consumer photo workflow app for mobile and web that lets you automatically back up, organize, edit, and share your digital photos. Even though Google Photos has ended its unlimited online storage policy, the app remains impressive. Its real differentiator is artificial intelligence that automatically produces artful content from your pictures. The app also offers powerful ways to find photos in your collection based on the people or objects in them or the place shot.
Other recent useful features include a private Locked Folder, Cinematic Moments that create pseudo-3D animation from two similar photos, and Memories, sort of like private auto-generated Instagram Stories. Recent improvements give you new ways to present and share Memories, plus a new Collage editor, a Photoshop-like Magic Eraser, more printing options, and improvements to Cinematic Moments.
Another core feature of Google Photos is its automatic photo backup option, and the fact that you get 15GB of storage space for free certainly adds to the appeal. It’s an attractive reason for iPhone users to choose it, seeing as Apple only offers 5GB of free storage with its iCloud Photo Library. Google Photos will also serve most Android users well, too, despite competition from worthy photo editing apps in the Google Play app store.
Google Photos is a photo sharing and storage service developed by Google. It was announced in May 2015 and spun off from Google+, the company’s former social network.
As of June 1, 2021, in its free tier, any newly uploaded photo and video counts towards the 15 GB free storage quota shared across the user’s Google services, with the exception of current Pixel phones. The previous free tier, unlimited photos and videos up to 16 megapixels and 1080p resolution respectively (anything larger gets down-scaled to these sizes), ended on the same day.
The service automatically analyzes photos, identifying various visual features and subjects. Users can search for anything in photos, with the service returning results from three major categories: People, Places, and Things. The computer vision of Google Photos recognizes faces (not only those of humans, but pets as well), grouping similar ones together (this feature is only available in certain countries due to privacy laws); geographic landmarks (such as the Eiffel Tower); and subject matter, including birthdays, buildings, animals, food, and more.
Different forms of machine learning in the Photos service allow recognition of photo contents, automatically generate albums, animate similar photos into quick videos, surface past memories at significant times, and improve the quality of photos and videos. In May 2017, Google announced several updates to Google Photos, including reminders for and suggested sharing of photos, shared photo libraries between two users, and physical albums. Photos automatically suggested collections based on face, location, trip, or other distinction.
Google Photos received critical acclaim after its decoupling from Google+ in 2015. Reviewers praised the updated Photos service for its recognition technology, search, apps, and loading times. Nevertheless, privacy concerns were raised, including Google’s motivation for building the service, as well as its relationship to governments and possible laws requiring Google to hand over a user’s entire photo history. Google Photos has seen strong user adoption. It reached 100 million users after five months, 200 million after one year, 500 million after two years, and passed the 1 billion user mark in 2019, four years after its initial launch. Google reports as of 2020, approximately 28 billion photos and videos are uploaded to the service every week, and more than 4 trillion photos are stored in the service total.
PROS
- Attractive, ad-free interface
- Solid facial recognition capability
- Well integrated with Android
- Low-cost basic photo books
- Clever photo enhancements
CONS
- No more free unlimited photo storage
- Lacks step-by-step undo for editing
- No blemish or red eye removal tools
- No built-in sharing to Instagram or Flickr
Getting Your Pictures Together
If a cloud photo service’s intention is to gather all your photos from all sources, it had better have desktop utilities that auto-upload from Windows and Mac computers, in addition to mobile apps. Just as Flickr, iCloud, and OneDrive do, Google Photos offers such an app in the Download Apps menu choice: “Auto upload photos from your Mac or Windows computer, camera, or storage cards.” It takes you to the Backup & Sync utility installer. It’s also the same app that consumers use for Google Drive, but after installation, there’s an option to use it only for photos and videos.
Photography experiences, designed for today
Upload
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Transfer photos easily
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Save on storage
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Add context to photos and albums
Connect
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Integrate seamlessly into your app
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Automatically organize content
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Keep in sync with new content
Share
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Increase engagement
Share with anyone, even those without your app!
Features
The service has apps for the Android and iOS operating systems, and a website. Users back up their photos to the cloud service, which becomes accessible for all of their devices.
The Photos service analyzes and organizes images into groups and can identify features such as beaches, skylines, or “snowstorm in Toronto.” From the application’s search window, users are shown potential searches for groups of photos in three major categories: People, Places, and Things. The service analyzes photos for similar faces and groups them together in the People category. It can also track faces as they age. The Places category uses geotagging data but can also determine locations in older pictures by analyzing for major landmarks (e.g., photos containing the Eiffel Tower). The Things category processes photos for their subject matter: birthdays, buildings, cats, concerts, food, graduations, posters, screenshots, etc. Users can manually remove categorization errors. Google Lens is also integrated into the service.
Recipients of shared images can view web galleries without needing to download the app. Users can swipe their fingers across the screen to adjust the service’s photo editing settings, as opposed to using sliders. Images can be easily shared with social networks (Google+, Facebook, Twitter) and other services. The application generates web links that both Google Photos users and non-users can access.
Storage
Google Photos has three storage settings: “High quality” (now Storage Saver), “Original quality” and “Express quality” (unavailable in certain locations). High quality includes photo and video storage for photos up to 16 megapixels and videos up to 1080p resolution (the maximum resolutions for average smartphone users in 2015). Original quality preserves the original resolution and quality of the photos and videos. Express quality includes photo and video storage for photos up to 3 megapixels and videos up to 480p resolution.
For the first three generations of the Google Pixel phones, Google Photos offers unlimited storage at “Original quality” for free. The original Pixel had no limits to this offer, while the Pixel 2 and 3 only offered unlimited storage at “Original quality” for photos and videos taken before January 16, 2021 and January 31, 2022 respectively, with all photos and videos taken after those dates being uploaded at “High quality” instead. The Pixel 3a and onwards do not offer unlimited storage at “Original quality”, with the Pixel 4, Pixel 4a, Pixel 4a (5G), and Pixel 5 offering a 3-month trial for the 100 GB Google One plan to new members instead.
In November 2020, Google Photos announced that it would be ending its offering of free unlimited storage for photos uploaded in “high quality” or “express quality” starting on June 1, 2021, due to rising demand for storage. On June 1, 2021, Google Photos changed the name of “high quality” to “storage saver”. The move was part of an effort to reduce Google’s reliance on ad-based revenue and increase subscriptions. Existing photos will remain unaffected, and new photos will count towards the user’s storage quota shared across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. Owners of the first five generations of Google Pixel smartphones will remain exempt from this change.
Outstanding issues
There are issues about data sharing and exporting, such as not being able to download pictures and videos in their original quality or with all the original data, notably GPS location info. Even downloading via the Google Takeout feature results in some of the original information missing. This could potentially lead to vendor lock in if the user wants to keep using features requiring those missing pieces of data.
Choose a plan that works for you
Starting at 100 GB. All Google Accounts include 15 GB of storage.
- 15 GB of storage
- 100 GB of storage
- Access to Google experts
- Share with up to five others
- Extra member benefits
- 200 GB of storage
- Access to Google experts
- Share with up to five others
- Extra member benefits
- 2 TB of storage
- Access to Google experts
- Share with up to five others
- Extra member benefits
