Google Photos is the best Cloud solution for your photos!

Mobile technology has equipped us all with cameras in the form of smartphones.

It has become our second nature to be in a great moment with friends or family and take out our smart cameras and save that moment forever.

Years of taking pictures results in hundreds and thousands of them, eventually saved to our computers so that we don’t lose them.

But the question is, what if your laptop is stolen? What if its hard drive burns? What if the memory card on your device gets corrupted and what if you lose your smartphone to theft or you forget it somewhere??

Years of memories lost in an instant! And there will be no easy way to recover them. Or there might be no way at all.

Now consider this; What if you can save your pictures some place safe and private, not only the ones you take on your smartphone, but also those already present on your personal computer without worrying about your smartphone being stolen or your hard drive corrupting.

And you can access all of them, at any time, from anywhere and any device.

Google Photos!

Google Photos previously known as Google+ photos is the latest Photo service launched by Google.

It is independent and in no way connected to the Google+ now.

What Google Photos does is that it uploads your Photos to the cloud from your smartphones as well as computers. Any photo that you take on your phone is automatically uploaded.

Your Photos are private and for your eyes only.

Now there are many other services that offer the same functionality, Dropbox to name one. But Google has managed to beat them all with some jaw dropping offerings in this app.

It’s Free!

First and foremost, Google Photos is absolutely free. There are no hidden charges as well as no subscription.

It’s unlimited

Secondly, you can save an unlimited, that’s right, unlimited number of photos and videos in their original quality.

Google claims that it saves images of up to 16MP and 1080P videos in their original but compressed printable quality.

Even so, you can still save the photos in their full resolution, but against your Google Drive storage. Google provides 15Gb of Drive storage to every account holder. To do this, simply choose Original format instead of High Quality in the app settings.

It’s available on Android, iOS and the Web

Google Photos is available on both major mobile platforms, Android and iOS.

Furthermore, there is a web client as well, so you can enjoy your pictures on your laptops from anywhere in the world. All you need is an internet connection and password for your Google account.

Let’s talk about the features of the app briefly.

Organization

Once you have downloaded the app and signed in with your Google account, you will notice that the app is divided into three main portions.

The main page is where all your photos are present, sorted out in a timeline fashion. You can view your photos in four views, i.e. Comfortable view, day view, month view and year view. You can change views from the three dots menu on the top right or by simply pinching to zoom in or out.

Swipe to right and you will enter assistant tab. Here, similar images from your library are converted into beautiful collages, GIFs and stories. Stories are actually these incredible short videos that the app chooses from your uploaded videos and then merge them with the images to make one hell of a short movie.

Swiping to the left from the main page open ups your collections and albums. These are all the images from the same trip or a party grouped together in a storyline fashion.

Search

One of the most powerful features of Google Photos is its search engine which organizes your photos by categories such as people, places and things that matter, for e.g. If you are looking for a photo with a dog in it, simply type dog in the search bar and the app will bring you all the photos with dog in it.

And all of this happens automatically without you adding any tags.

Sharing

Last but not the least, let me highlight its sharing functions which have impressed me the most. You can choose any number of images by long pressing on one image and then sliding down the screen, then press the sharing button and share it to the app of your choice.

Or you can simply get the link for all those photos and share it with your friends or family members.

If they are not Google Photos user, they can open the link in a browser and even download all the photos in their original quality if they choose so.

However, if they happen to use Google Photos, they will be given the option to save those shared photos to their Google Photos account.

Have a go at it guys, it’s free and you have nothing to lose here. I personally love Google Photos and it has become my new favorite app.

Download Google Photos for Android, iOS and Web.

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Originally published at www.techreviewpk.com on June 26, 2015.