Yesterday, Google finally freed Google Photos. The service has long wanted to be the ultimate photo-management app, but it's been trapped---by Google+. No longer: Now, Google Photos is available for Android, iOS, and via the Web, and you won't have to hide your images inside that long-dormant G+ account.
Though Google Photos is a brand-new product, it stills shares its DNA with Google+’s photo services. Your photos remain private unless you want to post or share them. Google+ is still one entry point option---if you select “Photos” on your Google+ profile, you get your Google Photos collection---but you can manage your pics from the standalone apps and at photos.google.com. In other words, there's no Google+ tie-in needed.
While the emancipation of Google Photos is great news, the app has a few tradeoffs. For starters, you need to be OK with storing all your photos in the cloud to get the most of it. But the new photo service's organizational powers, search capabilities, and sync/backup features add up to an essential download.
The first benefit of the service is freeing up storage on your phone. As long as you’re cool with a maximum resolution of 16 megapixels and/or 1080p video, Google Photos provides free, unlimited cloud backup for everything you shoot. For higher-resolution shots and 4K early adopters, there are also options. You get a free 15GB of Google Drive storage, but then the price ramps up to $1.99 per month for 100GB and $9.99 per month for 1TB.
Tying automatic cloud backup to a phone’s camera or photo roll is nothing new, but this is a cross-platform deal. The service works with both iOS and Android. Also, it’s the best deal among free and paid options. Apple offers a free 5GB of cloud storage for full-resolution photos on iCloud, but you need to pay for anything more than that. Amazon offers unlimited free backup for Prime subscribers, which costs $99 per year.
But with Google Photos, online storage is essential to making the whole thing work. Two of the app’s best features require you to upload your photos from your device to the cloud in order to work their magic.
The first of those features is search. Without having to manually tag people or locations in your photos, you can search your collection for “skyline” or “cars” or “oysters” or “steak” or “dog.” All of those worked for me. You can search for a color, and the app will bring up photos with that respective shade.
One thing it doesn't do is recognize you by name. It'll group together photos featuring the same face, and it was even smart enough to know the difference between my own face and a 3-D printed version of my face. But it won't automatically append an identity to those faces, and that's by design.
"It’s very important for us to make this a private home for your photos," Anil Sabharwal, head of Google Photos, told WIRED. "We’re not tying this back to any identity. You can label a person and over time, you can give them nicknames, but from the system’s perspective, it’s not tied to any identity... Any changes or intelligence that we learn from tagging a particular person in your account won’t impact anything on my account. We want to keep those things very siloed in order to maintain this very private area."
So while the search isn’t perfect, it’s still pretty magical. The A.I. is destined to get better, and it’s already a godsend for finding one particular photo in a sea of thousands within seconds.
"It’s powered by all the computer vision capabilities that Google has built up over the past several years," says Sabharwal. "You can see this today, even on Google image search... 'here is an image I have, I want images that are similar to this one,' we can do some amazing computer vision on that. So we’ve essentially taken that technology and all of the capabilities that Google has built, and it’s a really big investment area for us... we’ve applied it very privately for your eyes only."
The computer-vision tech isn't the only thing driving the search results, Sabharwal says. If an image has been geotagged, it'll use EXIF data to pinpoint its location. If a user has their location history turned on, Google Photos can also use past locations to identify where you were when a photo was taken. Landmark-detection software also helps identify some locations in images, according to Sabharwal.
Another feature that requires you to upload images helps make better use of your throwaway shots. In the “Assistant” tab, the app compiles animated GIFs and collages automatically from photos it senses are related---either from a trip, a group of people, or a string of images captured in a row. My phone’s photo roll is packed with boring sequences from product announcements and trade shows that I rarely look at, but Google Photos made them compelling by cobbling them together. It makes something out of nothing.
The presentation tools within the app also stand out. You can either select a “Comfortable view,” which is essentially large images in a vertical scroll, or a view of tinier thumbnails in daily or monthly layouts. You can toggle between those views with a drop-down menu, but pinching to zoom switches between the three views more fluidly. (It’s also more fun that way.)
When it comes to batch-selecting images for grouping, sharing, or deleting, it’s hard to think of a better implementation than the one in Google Photos. You hold your finger on an image and then just drag your finger to the end of your selected batch. It saves a ton of time compared to selecting photos individually.
And of course, there are your basic image-editing tools and sharing features. Once you edit an image, the changes apply to the image stored on Google Photos---a definite perk of having a cloud-based storage system. In terms of editing options, they’re extensive but expected at this point: Filters, color enhancements, a vignette effect, cropping and rotation tools, you know the drill. While you’re viewing your images, you can also quickly share them via URL, email, messaging, social networks, and other supported services.
Instagram is essential for sharing, your favorite image editor is essential for tweaking your photos, and your favorite camera app is essential for capturing everything. Google Photos is essential for everything else. The app makes it easier to find that photographic needle in the haystack, it creates value from random pictures, and its storage options match up well to the competition. With Photos, Google may have just eliminated the main reason to shell out an extra hundred dollars or so for the maximum-capacity model of your next phone. But you’ll need to trust the cloud, because all that online storage is the key to unlocking the app's best features.
