Tag: Google Photos

A new update to the Google Photos app is now rolling out in the Play Store, bringing several tweaks and enhancements to the photo storage app.  The update is version 3.13 for those keeping score at home.  One of the first changes you will notice is around Photo Books.  In this update, you can now get much more granular around book notifications, your draft photo books and promotions being offered.  Previously these were on by default.

There is also a new Share Back feature.  This works when you have an album shared with you in Google Photos.  In the overflow menu, you have the option to share back to that person immediately.  This will be a great feature for friends who want to share albums together.  For family members, it is still recommend you use the Partner Account sharing feature.

Google is in the process of rolling out a change they announced back in early December 2017 where viewing of Google Photos will no longer be available in Google Drive.  To be clear, this is in reference to the Google Photo menu option on the left.  If you click on that either online or in the Android/iOS app, you will no longer be able to view them.  Instead, you be prompted to go to Google Photos to view them.

Google Photos in Google Drive

The change is in an effort to simplify the connection between Google Photos and Google Drive.  Users were confused on where exactly to go and manage or edit photos as it appeared you could do it in both services.  Now Google is pushing everyone towards Photos for photo management.

A small update to the Google Photos app is rolling out in the Play Store that gives a glimpse of what is going to be coming to other Google apps.  The update is version 3.10.0.177481342 for those keeping score at home and functionally, you aren’t going to find anything different.  What you will notice is the navigation bar at the bottom of the display.

Up until this update, the navigation bar has always been black.  Now it is white.  It is something that you are likely going to see more of over the course of the next few weeks as Chrome in the canary channel has a white navigation bar and the latest update to the YouTube app also sports it as does Gmail and Google Maps.

For those of you who have not tried out the Photo Book service through Google Photos, now is a good time to consider it.  Today through November 9th, you get free shipping on any hardcover photo book that you order through the service.  Photo Books start at $9.99.

The service allows you to select any photos from your Google Photos library and add them to a book.  You can then edit those photos, arrange them on the pages and through various templates to create a truly personalized book for yourself or as a gift.  In all, you can have up to 100 photos in a book a

I personally have ordered several Photo Books through Photos and I’ve not been disappointed in the quality of the product.  They make a great gift.

Now that the dust has settled a bit from yesterday’s massive Google product event, we can start digging into the details.  One of the items in the afterglow that caught a lot of people’s attention has to do with Google Photos and the new Pixel 2 lineup.

As readers are likely aware, with the original Pixel and Pixel XL, users had unlimited uploading of original quality photos to Google Photos.  On every other device out there this counts against your Google Drive quota (remember, Google Photos leverages your Google Drive for storage) so it was a nice perk to have indeed.  Everyone else has to use High Quality, a compression process that allows Google to look at the content of photos to train their AI, in order not to use their Drive quota.  Frankly, I use HQ on my other non-Pixel devices because the compression is pretty lossless, especially if photos are under 16MP.  The original Pixel and the Pixel 2 both have 12MP cameras so technically, there is no reason not to use HQ.

In the fine print yesterday it was discovered that for owners of the new Pixel phones, the Original Quality uploads will be available until 2020.  After that, uploads will start counting against your Drive quota.  This cause a lot of consternation for some but frankly, it isn’t a surprise or a big deal.

Google Photos for Android has a small but handy update rolling out to users today.  The update, version 3.6 for those keeping score at home, brings improved speeds when it comes to sharing videos from your collection.

The improvements in speeds comes in the way that Photos handles video sharing.  When you want to share a video, a low resolution version of that video is uploaded to the service while the full resolution version is uploaded more slowly.  This is particularly handy when you are in congested network or have low signal while out-and-about.  Now you can share the video and it not take a long time to upload before you can share it.