Store and share images with Google Photos
Graham Barlow shows how to make use of Google’s free cloud storage to upload and share your photos with friends and family.
With its world-class reputation as a search engine and email provider, Google might not be the first thing to spring to mind as a place to store your photos online. Photo-sharing sites such as Flickr probably pop up first, but thanks to the way Google integrates everything and makes sharing easier than ever, it’s become an option well worth checking out. Let’s also not forget all that lovely free storage!
Google Photos has access to the 15GB of free space that Google Drive offers — and if you use Google Drive at work or school, then you could have 30GB of space available, or more.
Google makes it really easy to share photos, too, appearing as a folder in Google Drive, from where you can choose to share with fellow Gmail users or generate links that can be mailed to anyone. Of course, you might have no interest in sharing your photos at all. Google Photos can still be used just for private backup; in fact, it has a handy automatic backup option that will copy all the photos on your phone to the cloud. You need to be vigilant about what pop-up messages it gives you, however, and don’t just click ‘OK’ without reading what it is you’re agreeing to. Like most social networks, it’s in Google’s interest for you to share as much stuff as possible, and it will encourage you to share your photos at almost every opportunity. If you’re a very private person, you’ll probably find this annoying, but by being very careful about what you agree to, you can limit who your photos are shared with, and make best use of the service.
FINDING GOOGLE PHOTOS
The Photos section of Google is contained within Google Drive, so you’re going to need a Google account to access it. If you’ve got a Gmail account, then you’ll already have a Google Drive account, even if you aren’t aware of it. Open the Chrome browser on your PC or Mac, and from the Google Drive page ( drive.google.com) you can simply select Photos from the menu on the left-hand side of the screen.
The Google Photos service isn’t just for desktops and laptops, though — you can access it on your mobile device using dedicated apps, both for Android and iOS, with ease. So you can shoot photos (or videos) on, say, your smartphone, then upload them to Google Photos immediately and enjoy them from any device. You might expect the more advanced features to only be available on devices running Google’s own Android platform, but the Google Photos experience on an iOS device is the same as Android’s.
The biggest feature is found in the app’s Assistant screen and is just called ‘Movie’ — it’s a way of automatically taking your photos and video clips and creating a nice video that links them all together. You can also turn the best photos from your collection into an interactive timeline, complete with