Google Photos is a photo sharing and storage service developed by Google. It stores your photos and videos in “the cloud” (tech-speak for online storage). It works on Android and iOS devices, and also has an online version. Features, and how you take advantage of them, varies a bit depending on the device you are using. We’ve linked to Google Photos Help to guide you through specifics below for just this reason. Overall, Google Photos is intuitive and user-friendly, no matter what device you’re using it on.
There are innumerable benefits to using Google Photos, way more than we have space to list. You can:
• Set automatic backups for when you’re connected to wifi.
• Access your photos or videos from any phone, tablet, computer that has internet access.
• Share albums, photos, or videos with others–even if they don’t have Google Photos.
• Free up space on your phone by deleting photos and videos once they’ve been uploaded.
Back up and sync automatically
If you take photos on your phone, the easiest way to get them to your Google Photos account is to set your phone to automatically upload photos to Google Photos when you’re connected to wifi. This is ideal if you have a limited data plan on your phone. It’s also a smart way to ensure you don’t lose your precious images.
Tag people and pets
Google Photos can group all photos of a person or pet by name. Once you've assigned a name to a person or pet, you can search in the app to find all photos of them. Labeling pets and people means you’ll be able to easily put your finger on a memory–even years into the future.
Pro tip: When you digitize your photos with Capture and choose the “Add to Google Photos” option, we ask for information about your media like a title for your album and the date you think it was created. Any info you provide passes through into Google Photos, helping you complete your memory timeline and adding to your searching capabilities.
Find what you’re looking for fast
Google brings the power of the most powerful search engine on the planet to your photo library. You can search for people, pets, places, things, text, and more. You can type in search terms like “soccer”, “Sydney”, “Brian birthday”, “shrimp pasta recipe”, “Hillary new car.” You can even combine multiple search terms to help pare down the options “2022 winter Thanksgiving Mom dinner”.
What makes the Google Photos Search feature great is you don’t need to remember the specific date or even any specific details of the photo you’re looking for.
Assemble albums
One of the clearest ways to organize your media is by creating albums. Each album can hold up to 20,000 images or videos. What’s more, you can add maps and text to an album.
While you’re working on albums, you might also want to archive photos that you want to keep, but don’t necessarily want to revisit like screenshots or receipts.
Share simply
Sharing is one of the most powerful features of Google Photos. When you have your Google Photos organized in albums and/or have tagged people and animals, they couldn’t be easier to share with others.
Have someone that you’d like to regularly share photos with? You can add a partner. Each time you back up and sync your photos, they’ll be shared with them automatically. Many use this feature to share photos of their kids or pets with their partner or parents. Caveat: Google Photos only lets you have one sharing partner. Choose wisely.
Sharing photos via a digital frame, top-rated Aura, is another fantastic way to quickly let others in on what you’ve been up to. A digital frame is a great gif for anyone you’d like to keep up-to-date–without the recipient having to do a thing. Many frames not only let you update them from anywhere with new photos, but videos too
Get started digitizing with Capture
It’s never too early to start thinking about the holidays and moving precious memories into a Google Photos library with Capture. Now is the perfect time to start creating a complete memory timeline in prep for a memory viewing party with family and friends when you gather together to celebrate this year. Having photos in Google Photos also makes it easy to give a photo-based gift your loved ones will love!
Pro tip: One of the best benefits of digitizing with Capture is that we add the digital files of the memories we’ve digitized for you to your Google Photos automatically–in addition to sending you a DVD or USB drive. Just be sure to select “Add to Google Photos” as part of your checkout process
Have questions? Please reach out. We love to talk digitizing.
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