We use our smartphones to do everything nowadays. From staying in touch with family and friends to Keeping up with the Kardashians and everything in between. Our cameras have gotten so good that we don’t walk around with digital cameras anymore. But then what do we do with the hundreds of photos we take over the many months and years? We have them on our phones, hogging up precious memory and…just sitting there. That is where Google Photos comes in.
Google Photos was announced way back in 2015 and has since grown to be one of the most indispensable products by Google. It leverages the power and advantages of cloud storage to provide a seamless way for you to backup, manage and essentially immortalize your Gallery.
Here are some of Google Photos’ standout attributes;
Automatic Backup
If you are like me, which is most people, you have a lot of photos on your phone from various sources. For instance, your Camera folder has all those crispy selfies and precious moments with friends and family. You also have a folder with your WhatsApp images. You can set up Google Photos to automatically backup these images and many others from various sources to the cloud so you never lose them.
Automatic Photo Organisation
We take a lot of photos with our phones and backing up all of them presents yet another problem. It gets easy to lose that one photo in the sea of all the ones you have backed up. Google being, well, Google, leverages their facial recognition, AI, and machine learning prowess to help you manage and sort your photos using whichever criteria you could think of. Your photos are organized and searchable by the places and things in them
You’re looking for photos of you and your brother, search for just that and boom, photos of you and your bro show up. You want wedding photos, search for that and you have all the wedding photos from your Google Photos. It is crazy but from my personal experience, it actually works. Admittedly there will be some false-positives but for the most part, it really works.
Easier Sharing with friends and family
It is super easy to share photos from Google Photos. You can select a single photo or press, hold and highlight a bunch of them and share the actual photos, or get a link that you can then share with your mates. Your mates don’t need to have the Google Photos app to open that link and get access to the shared media. If the recipients have Google accounts, they can import the shared photos into their Google Photos library with a single tap. It really is that simple.
Also Read: Google Photos Latest Update Comes With Video Stabilization Feature
Your Photos, anywhere, anytime on any device.
Being a cloud-based service, Google Photos allows you access to all your photos on any device, anywhere. All you need is a connected device, your Google login credentials, and that’s pretty much it. Head on to Google Photos, log in using your Google username and password and you have access to all your photos.
Simple Editing and Filters for your photos
Apart from helping you backup your photos, Google Photos offers basic functions for you to edit your photos. It might seem mediocre to someone that is into professional photo works but for the average Joe, the ability to create Collages, add Light, Color and Vignette is more than enough. There is also an option to let Google automatically enhance your photos.
Unlimited Backup for Photos and Videos
So Google Photos offers you an unlimited backup of photos and videos. In theory, then, you could store every single photo you’ve ever taken, forever, at absolutely no charge. And your photos would be automatically organized in a single library that is well sorted and potentially available forever.
True, the photos you upload to Google Photos are compressed a bit but unless you’re a pixel peeper or you fancy working on your RAW files on PhotoShop and stuff, you may never notice.
How to get Started
If you own an Android, you most definitely have a Google Account. Those on iOS too most likely have a Google Account. All you need to do then is head on to your platform’s apps vendor, Play Store for Android and AppStore for iOS and download the Google Photos app. The setup is as straight-forward as could be and in no time, you’ll be automatically offloading your precious images from your device to the cloud.
