When it comes to photo management and editing, Google Photos is an outstanding tool and it is available for Android and iOS devices. But for long time Google Drive users, there is a bit of confusion as to when to use Drive versus Photos and what each of them do when it comes to your photos. Fellow Top Contributor for Google Photos, Scott Peachey, has put together an excellent video to explain how it all works together.
It was widely expected that today would be the day that Google dropped the January security update for Nexus devices and that appears to be the case. Google has updated the Factory Images page on their developer site, bringing the latest build of Android Marshmallow to a range of devices. With the release of the images, users can expect the OTA updates to being shortly to the latest build of 6.0.1 while manufactures and carriers can start doing their testing to get updates out quickly. It is likely we will see an update from HTC and T-Mobile drop for the One A9 and Nexus 6 respectively in the next two weeks.
The updated images are for all of the devices that were upgraded or released with Android Marshmallow. Here is the list and the newest build number for each Nexus device.
If you are comfortable with flashing your devices then you can download the files today and update immediately. Otherwise you will need to wait for the OTA update.
It was a long time coming but earlier this week the Google Photos team updated the app and service so you can share photo albums with others. The idea is that if I share an album with you, you will be able to see the photos without having to be a user of the service or even an Android user. It also gives you the ability to allow people you share with to add their photos to the album which are uploaded to your photos library. When Google previewed this back in September, it was a feature that I personally had keen interest in seeing as I use Google Photos and Android while my wife is an iPhone user. Now we can share albums of our events without having to do the USB stick drive swap.
To share an album in Google Photos for web, just open up the album you want to share and tap the Share icon in the upper right corner. There you can select those you want to share it with anyone by getting a link to the album (so you could send it via email) but I can also share that album with Google+, Facebook and Twitter too. You can also select if those you are sharing with can upload photos to the album.
Sharing on Google Photos for Android is just as easy.
For those of you who use Google Photos, there are some big updates coming your way both in the Android app and on the services website. In a post on his Google+, Google’s John Elstone posted about the changes which are going to be released this week, likely today or tomorrow. The first two updates have to do with the Android based Google Photos app and focus on being able to delete backed up photos from your devices and SD cards to save space. The third update is on the Google Photos website that brings a much wanted downgrade feature for photos from “Original Quality” to “High Quality”.
When we think of Google we often think only of their mobile apps for Android and iOS rather than their desktop apps with the exception being Chrome. The reality is that the Mountain View company makes some pretty desktop apps that, while often utilitarian in nature, do a great job at what they are designed to do. A good example of this is the Google Photos desktop app. Designed for Mac and Windows, the app allows you to upload photos from any folder, drive or even a storage card to your Google Photos account. Moreover, it gives you complete control of the quality of the uploads (High Quality or Original) so you can decide which will work best for you. Best of all of course is that the Google Photos desktop app is free as we have come to expect from Google.
Google Photos has become one of the more powerful photo viewing, storing and editing apps available for Android phones and tablets (as well as a really good website). While there are more powerful editing apps out there, Google Photos will meet the need for the vast majority of users and with the ability to store your photos in your Google Drive, you always have a backup of your photos.
A great feature of Google Photos is the Assistant feature. This feature automatically creates movies, stories and enhanced photos of those you have uploaded to the service and some of them are really good. You can chose if you want to keep what the assistant creates or not and it allows you to painlessly add some creativity to your photos. However, there may be a time where you want to create a movie of your photos yourself. Google has made it easy to do and in this How To I will show you the steps to take to create a movie in Google Photos.
Yesterday as part of the Google event, the company laid out a lot of the changes that are coming to Google Photos. One of those big new features was support for Chromecast which will allow you to share your photos via a cast and even allow you to navigate your photos while others are viewing an image on the television. That update, version 1.6 for those keeping score at home, has now been published to the Google Play Store and available for download. You can even cast photos that you haven’t backup yet. It’s an great new feature that anyone with a Chromecast will appreciate.
As part of the Google event today, the company spent a good amount of time explaining the new features that are coming to Google Photos. The app, which was launched just a handful of months ago, already has 20 million users and more than 50 billion photos have been uploaded according to Google. With all of those users, undoubtedly there have been further enhancements and improvements that have been requested and now it looks like Google has been listening.
The first big update coming is the ability to share and subscribe to albums on your Google Photos account. If you have a photo album you want to share with friends and family, you can use the share function and send a link to that album. In turn, users can add photos of their own to that album and can subscribe to that album so they can see any new photos added to it through a notification in the Google Photos app on their Android devices or iOS devices.