Is Google Photos the Holy Grail for mobile photography?

Not long after I've published my article about my iPhone photography workflow and how Apple iCloud Photo Library sucks, Google announced Google Photos and I've decided to give it a go since it would be cheaper than my iCloud 200GB subscription (100GB is enough for me) and it might also answer some of my desires.

So, is Google Photos the holy grail for mobile photography?

Long story short: not really, but they're closer.

Short Story Long

Google came out with Google Photos promising to give you all of your photos and videos in all your devices along with amazing, and sometimes creepy, suggestions for you photos. From trip stories/albums to gif animations, videos and even photo edit suggestions, they have it all covered. But, and in this case a big but, you need to be aware that you're giving away your privacy and allowing Google to access and analyze all your photos to make their computers smarter, and to know you even better. In my case I've little problem with it, but it will obviously count to sum the overall pros and cons as a con, and I think that you should reflect about it before you sign in.

If you read my previous article you know what I expect to be like the mobile photography workflow in a perfect world, but if you didn't I'll tell you: I want to manage only one library with all my photos that should have reversible/enhanceable non-destructive edits everywhere, which in my case is my Mac and my iPhone. Google Photos won’t solve it entirely because VSCOCam, the main app I use to edit my photos, still has it’s own library but it could be a good replacement for iCloud Photo Library and I'm basing my tests on that.

Setup

Unlike iCloud Photo Library, Google Photos gave me no hassles whatsoever. The upload worked like a charm, it even downloaded the full versions of my photos from iCloud (this might be Apple credits) before uploading them to Google Drive. To see how Google Photos would handle it compared to iCloud Photo Library, I've stopped the upload for a couple of hours and started again to find out that Google has done it right, the app identified which photos were already in sync and did not uploaded them again. So, after four days of uploads I had my 22GB of photos and videos uploaded and I was ready to test the app features.

Testing

Adding and deleting photos

I want to be able to add and remove photos from where I have access to Google Photos, in this case it’s my iPhone, the browser and the Google Photos folder on my Mac. For the latter you'll need to activate from your google drive settings to access it.

Despite the fact that you can access your photos from your Drive folder, I've concluded that Google wants you to use the mobile app or the web interface since the folder on your drive works more like a backup than an integral part of the system.

So, if I add a new photo from:

iPhone camera — photo will be synced with the cloud and can be seen in the app, web and drive folder.

Web upload — photo will be synced with all my devices but won’t be downloaded to my iPhone. I'll need to manually download it otherwise a data connection to access its full version is required.

Google Drive photos folder — photo will be uploaded to Google Drive, not Google Photos, and won't be available neither on your iPhone nor webview.

If I delete a photo from:

My iPhone Google Photos App — after requesting access to modify my photo from Apple Photos, it will be moved from my iPhone, from the cloud and from my Google Drive folder to my trash bin.

Web Interface — the photo is deleted from my online library and my drive folder, and although it won't appear on my iPhone Google Photos app it doesn't get deleted from my iPhone camera roll. My guess here is that Apple doesn't allow that kind of access from 3rd party apps.

Google Drive photos folder — same as deleting it from the web interface.

I think that the integration is not that good, specially since I want to be able to manage my photos also from my desktop, where I can only delete photos partially, as they won't be deleted from my iPhone.

Managing and editing photos

All my created albums/collections and animations will be available on my iPhone and web interface, the same goes for the photo edits (they are non destructive) that can also be seen on my camera roll or Apple Photos desktop app, where I can enhance them using iOS/OSX edition tools or revert the photo to the original state.

Google really loses a lot for not having a native desktop app like Apple Photos does, since I lose all my albums and edits when I go to my desktop. I tried to open a photo edited in Google Photos that was on my Google Drive folder in Lightroom to see if it could recognise the edits on the photo, like Apple Photos does with photos edited in Google Photos, but it didn’t. Although it would be nice to have the changes recognised by Lightroom, this would imply another place to organize photos, hence a new library to manage, which I don't want (the point is to have only one).

Not being the native photos app also brings some quirks when it comes to comunicate with other apps, specially the ones that don't have an “Open in” widget, like VSCOCam. For example, if I create an album from today at the beach and want to import all its pictures to VSCOCam, I can't access it from the import tool of VSCOCam, I only have access to Apple Photos albums, bummer.

Suming Pros & Cons

What I did like:

• The synchronization service works flawlessly, unlike Apple’s iCloud
• The ability to pause the sync for a period of time without any hassle
• The incredible edit suggestions the app gives you, including the cool animated gifs
• The interface is really nice
• The sharing features
• Cheaper than iCloud

What I disliked:

• Burst photos are not aggregated like they are on Apple Photos
• Not being a native app adds some hassles that I've already explained previously
• You’re giving away your privacy
• Not having a native desktop app
• It is not possible to visually distinguish a photo that is on your device or only on the cloud (you need to check its settings)

Conclusion

Despite the fact that Google Photos is an excellent service, and that Apple should really try to learn something from Google when it comes to sync services, the inconveniences that not being the native photos library brings, in addition to the privacy concerns, won’t make me go away from iCloud Photo Library. Apple really has an advantage here with iOS and OSX users because of its ecosystem, even with such a bad service. What is really incomprehensible is how the most valuable company in the world continues to deliver such poor services! (Just two weeks ago they did it again with Apple Music)

On the other hand, Android users really received an excellent upgrade to their photos app, and since they get this app as native, they ended up with a better cloud sync system for their photos than Apple users.

Don’t forget to check my instagram here. :)