HOW TO

Find your way around Google Photos

1

CHOOSE YOUR IMAGE SOURCE If you’ve already been using Google Photos, this should look familiar: Google shows you the most recent ones when you log in, as shown here. To add more images, look at the icons towards the top right of the window and select the Upload one. This gives you two options: you can upload images from your computer, or you can add photographs stored in your Google Drive.

2

ACCESS YOUR GOOGLE DRIVE Google Drive and Google Photos no longer automatically sync with each other, so images you add to Google Drive won’t appear in Google Photos unless you specifically add them. To do that, choose the Google Drive upload option. As you can see there are four tabs here: recent images, your Google Drive, images that have been shared with you, and images that you’ve starred.

3

GET THE PHOTOS FROM YOUR PC If you choose to upload from your computer, you’ll see the familiar File Open dialog box where you can choose one, some or all pictures from a folder. If you aren’t short of space, don’t remove the images from your hard disk or SSD when you’re finished uploading: it’s always good to have a local copy of anything valuable that you store online. It’s a lot easier to backup too.

4

UPLOAD YOUR IMAGES If you’ve got a slow connection and lots of photographs, this is a good time to make a cup of tea: Google will upload your selected photos, with a progress bar appearing in the bottom left corner of the window to show what image is being uploaded and how many more there are to go. When it’s finished you can close this pop-up, or click on Add To Album or Shared Album.

5

CREATE A NEW ALBUM It’s a very, very good idea to sort every upload into an album unless you’re planning to store a tiny number of photos online. You’ll be glad you did when you’ve got 40,000 pictures and you’re trying to find that one of Karen’s wedding. When you click on Add To Album you’ll see a pop-up that gives access to existing albums or enables you to create a new one. Let’s make one.

6

EDIT YOUR ALBUM First, we’ve given our new album a meaningful title (what, where and when are always worth including); and second, we’ve dragged the images around into an order we like better. In the screenshot above, the thin line between images two and three is where we’re about to drop the first image. You’ll see that Google has automatically added the date range below the album’s title.

7

ADD YOUR LOCATION Many images include location information that will appear automatically, and you can add that on a per-photo basis if your camera or camera app doesn’t include it (perhaps because you haven’t enabled location services on your phone). You can also add a location to your entire album by clicking the map pin icon. It’s the second of the four icons at the top right of the window.

8

ADD A MAP We love this feature. You can also specify ‘from’ and ‘to’ locations, so if your photos were taken while travelling from New York to Los Angeles, John O’Groats to Land’s End or just on the 77 bus across town you can get

Google Photos to generate a map showing where you’ve been. It’s a really nice touch when you’re creating albums to remember holidays or other interesting trips.

9

IMPROVE YOUR IMAGES One of the biggest selling points of Google Photos is its extensive photo improvement features. When you’ve finished creating your album, click on the tick at the top left of the screen and then find an image you’d like to tweak. Tap on the sliders icon and you’ll be taken to a range of photo filters. The icons at the top right give you access to colour adjustment, cropping and rotating.

10

PUT YOUR PHOTOS TO WORK When you’re happy, you can tap on the ‘more’ icon – the three vertical dots at the top right – to bring up a quick access menu. From here you can go into slideshow mode, download the image to your PC, add it to an album or shared album or use it as the cover for the album it’s from. You can also remove it from the album, which won’t delete it, or move it to the bin, which will. TL