When Google launched Google+ in June 2011, skepticism was a lot, especially since it immediately seemed like a copy of Facebook and Twitter that offered nothing more. In fact, over time Google+ has been disabled, leaving behind its best part, which has now become Google Photos, specialized in photography .
Google has pushed the concept of photo sharing that has made Facebook's success with a further step forward, offering a platform to store, edit, upload every personal photo from a mobile phone with many sharing and viewing options .
In this guide we see how professional photographers and photographers from casual smartphones (iPhone and Android) can take advantage of Google Photos to preserve and manage their unique images.
READ UPDATE: Google Photos Cheats and special options for images and videos on smartphones and PCs
1) Creating a profile
What you need to register is a Google account which can be the one registered with a Gmail email address or in the Google Play Store. The account can also be started or configured from the Google Photos app of an Android or iOS mobile phone or tablet.
2) Space management for photos
The great thing for smartphone and non-professional photographers is that you can use Google Photos for free and upload an unlimited number of photos in high quality, with a maximum of 16 Megapixel photos and videos with 1080p resolution.
Professional photographers and those who want more space and to always upload full size photos, can buy 100 GB of space for $ 5 a month, 200GB for $ 10 and over up to 16 TB that cost $ 800 a month.
3) Upload photos
As with other photo sharing sites, it is important for Google Photos to offer users a fast, smooth way of uploading photos to the social network. On the website, press on the Home button in the upper left corner and go to the Photos section. In this section the uploaded photos are listed in chronological order even if at the beginning it will be a blank page.
You can then start uploading all the photos saved on your computer using the Upload Photos button, by dragging them to the page from the desktop or from a specific folder or by browsing the folders from the interface. Once the photos have been uploaded, you can rearrange them by dragging them on the page or by ordering them by date or by name using the down arrow key located at the top right.
Before pressing Finish, you can also press the Add to Album button to create a new album or add photos to an existing one. Google will ask you to indicate who the people in the photos are and if you want to share the uploaded photos or the whole album, but this for now can be ignored and the photos will not be visible to others.
3) Auto-Backup
The most useful feature of Google Photos is unlimited, free and automatic photo backup.
Auto-Backup can be activated in the settings and works completely automatically to save all the photos taken with the mobile phone on the Google online space. This is useful both for having a copy of the photos that will never be deleted, and for sharing these photos with friends or relatives quickly. In the options you can choose that the upload of photos and videos is done only if the smartphone is connected in Wifi. If you choose to upload photos in a non-original size, the space is unlimited.
In the options you can choose that the upload of photos and videos is done only if the smartphone is connected in Wifi.
Photos uploaded with Auto-backup are indicated in the Camera view with the symbol of the full speech bubble and are stored in a private album on Google Photos not visible to others (those with the empty speech bubble are still to be uploaded online).
These photos can also be shared, not necessarily, and for this reason Google Photos is also useful only for managing your own photo collections. You can share these publicly or for specific environments whenever you want, but it's a good failsafe that ensures other users can only see your work much better.
READ ALSO: Auto uploading photos from Android to Dropbox, Facebook or Google+
4) Photo management
The Photos section of Google Photos contains all the photos uploaded and shows them in different sections: highlights, Albums, Photos of you, Automatic Backup etc. The featured photos section is the first one that appears, where Google groups the best photographs it thinks are best suited for sharing. By moving the mouse over the photos, a blue dot appears which, when pressed, selects the image by making a menu appear at the top to copy, delete or even download the photos. Selecting and de-selecting images works the same way on the Google Photos mobile app. In the Album view you can download entire photo albums to bring them back to your PC.
By clicking on the down arrow at the top right you can find the buttons to download the album, view photos in slideshows and apply automatic correction. The search bar at the top is used to find the photos you are interested in seeing.
In the app for Android and iOS, photos can be browsed and filtered in various ways using the menu on the left.
5) Photo viewing
Google Photos is exceptional not only in storing your photos, but also in viewing them at their best, on a black background in full screen.
Every time you click on a photo, the image is displayed in the Google lightbox, very elegant, with few distractions. In the upper right corner you can see the caption of the image, the position and the details of the image. Using the white arrows at the bottom of the page you can quickly move forward and backward through the album. clicking on the grid button of white squares opens the complete series of photos of the album. You can also view photos in full screen in slideshow or presentation mode by pressing the button at the top. Finally, the magnifying glass icon allows you to zoom in on the photo. Presentation mode is also available in the Android or IOS app.
6) Edit Photos
Google Photos is also one of the best free online photo editing tools. Google goes beyond almost any other social network, offering its users for free, a photo editing software very similar to Photoshop. From the top menu you can quickly rotate photos and crop them, but it is by clicking on Edit that the real integrated photo editing tool opens.
On the app for iPhone, iPad and Android you can also rotate and crop photos and also apply photographic filters similar to those of Instagram.
With a photo open, press on More and then AutoCorrect to optimize and edit images automatically.
Images edited this way have the magic wand icon next to them.
In another article, there are details about the automatic effects of Google Photos.
The advanced editing tool instead is a reduced version of what was Snapseed, a very powerful photo editing app, with which you can do many post-production operations.
7) Share Photos
Google Photos is the best app and site to create an album shared with other people, in which all guests can participate.
READ ALSO: Best sites for storing photos online
