Google gets in the picture
Google has just released a new photo app, but how does it compare with those from Apple and Flickr?
The smartphone photo wars have started. In one corner, it’s Google Photos, as the search giant takes on Apple’s iCloud, Yahoo’s redesigned Flickr app, Dropbox, Microsoft and others, in a bid to be the one-stop app home for all your photos and videos.
Google Photos comes with the best price in town, unlimited storage (as long as you’re happy with a slightly lower resolution) and a promise of better navigation via Google search.
Flickr’s redesigned app offers full resolution for up to 1 terabyte of photos and videos, which Yahoo says is over 500,000 images. And iCloud works seamlessly between iPhones, iPads and computers.
All want to wean you off Facebook, the No 1 destination for photo sharing. Facebook greatly lowers your resolution when you try to download the photo, which is not cool if the picture is important to you, but makes it really easy to share with friends.
Google, Flickr and Apple all store photos at higher resolution than Facebook, and have one-click tabs to share on social networks. How do they stack up?
Google Photos
Basics: App for iOS and Android; web version at photos.google.com
Free unlimited storage, with an asterisk. Your photos and videos are compressed at a slightly lower resolution. Public and private sharing available.
Navigation: Photos are organised by date and compiled by facial recognition and mapping software to identify ‘‘places’’. Google instructs users to search for photos by when they were taken, or to use visual people search, looking for folks via their faces. Pics are also scanned by object detection so you could search for ‘‘basketball’’ or ‘‘nightclub’’.
Manual overrides: Tagging, album creating and file-naming provides more accurate information for better searching.
Bottom line: By picking up mapping, GPS and facial recognition, Google’s search tools are a major breakthrough in locating smartphone photos in an app, but the computer isn’t always right. You’ll need a good dose of manual override to tag and name non-smartphone photos.
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Apple iCloud
Basics: Gathers photos from iPhone and iPad and stores them online at icloud.com. You can get 5GB of storage for free. Public and private sharing available within the app. Photos are stored in full resolution.
Navigation: Apple categorises by location, or as one massive photo collection. You also get tabs for albums and photos, and it separates videos, panoramas and created albums.
Manual overrides: You can tag photos with a heart icon to put into the ‘‘Favourites’’ folder, or create albums of specific images.
Bottom line: Like Google Photos, the more info you give Apple, the better your experience will be, otherwise you’re scrolling through hundreds and hundreds of images. Searching not as good as Google, when Google is at its best.
The sharing service works well, if you’ve got the space. I hate the nag messages every morning from Apple that I’m out of room, so I don’t share much via iCloud, and instead just sync the photos to the computer the old-fashioned way, via cables.
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Flickr
Basics: 1 TB of storage free. Flickr.com for web viewing, and iOS and Android apps. Photos are stored in full resolution.
Navigation: The newly redesigned app has automatic uploader tools for computer and smartphone images, which are initially posted privately. Within the app, you see photos from the Camera Roll (your stash, shown chronologically, before you move them), public photos (ones you’ve labelled and tagged), Albums and Groups – a place to see photos within the Flickr community.
Manual overrides: The more info given, the better.
Bottom line: The new app now has image recognition. Like Google, it picks out places and objects, sometimes well, sometimes not so accurate. Nicely designed and worth a look, especially if having your images available to download at full resolution is important to you. One TB is a lot of space – just ask the folks who are maxing out at 5GB on iPhones. Be sure to tag and/or title your photos. Flickr needs your input to help you find the shots.
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Others
Microsoft and Dropbox also offer photo sharing via the OneDrive (15GB of free storage) and the Carousel (5GB of free storage) apps. Both offer chronological thumbnails of your photos, album creation, private and public sharing. Of the two, Dropbox has the prettier interface, but less liberal storage.
If you’re willing to pay, a premium service like Smugmug or Phanfare have way easier navigation, because all your photos are organised into folders, instead of just sucked in automatically, thus, they can be located way easier via search.
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