Items tagged with google photos
At least Google gave everyone a six-month heads up that it was yanking unlimited 'High' quality photo and video storage for non-Pixel owners, and will instead implement a 15GB cap. Still, it is disappointing. The deadline is fast approaching, too, with Google set to make the new cap effective June 1, 2021. When that day comes, what are you planning to do? You have options. No matter what you decide, the smartest play is to be sure you upload all your photos and videos ahead of time, because those will not count against your cap. "Your existing High quality photos and videos are exempt from this change: Any photos or videos backed up in High quality before June 1, 2021, will not count toward your...
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In less than four weeks from now (effective June 1, 2021), Google's free unlimited photo and video backup perk is going away for non-Pixel owners, replaced by a 15GB cap (photos and videos backed up prior to that date don't count against the cap). Same goes for future Pixel phones...or perhaps not. There is evidence to suggest Google may reinstate unlimited storage for future Pixel phones, with a caveat. The image quality would be somewhat reduced. To what extent is not clear, and this may not even happen anyway. However, the folks at XDA-Developers performed a teardown of the latest version of the Google Photos app (v5.4.1) that is in the Play Store, and there are some interesting strings pointing...
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You can never have too many backups of important data, including photos, videos, secret recipes, spy documents, and whatever else you deem valuable. Apple may not be able to help much with the latter two, but when it comes to all those photos and videos sitting in iCloud, the company has quietly released a new tool that makes it easy (though not necessarily quick) to shuttle copies over to Google Photos. The silent roll-out is not really surprising—Apple is probably loathe to draw attention to a service that sits outside of its own ecosystem. And that being the case, it is all the more appreciated that Apple would release a tool like this. So, kudos to Cook and the rest of the Cupertino...
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Yesterday, we learned of the unfortunate news that Google Photos will no longer provide unlimited storage for high-quality images starting on June 1st, 2021. While Google has made some meaningful concessions, like the fact that photos backed up prior to June 1st won’t count against your quota, it's still a big policy change that users should keep in mind if they use Google Photos as their primary online image backup resource. But it looks as though the gut punches don't end there for longtime users of Google Photos. We reported yesterday that Pixel, Pixel 2, Pixel 3, Pixel 4, and Pixel 5 families will still have access to the unlimited high-quality photo backups; and...
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Chucking images up into the cloud is perhaps the easiest way to store the massive number of photos that we take with our smartphones. Making it even more enticing was Google’s offer of “unlimited high-quality storage for free” through Google Photos. This meant that anyone could keep whatever images they wanted with no storage limit penalty. However, starting June 1st, 2021, Google is ending this offer and counting uploads toward the Google One limit of 15GB total. Google Photos' free high-quality uploads has been a nice feature for anyone that has used the service on an Android or iOS device. Pixel 5 and earlier devices will still have the unlimited high-quality images perk,...
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It is surprisingly easy to amass a sprawling catalog of photos on Facebook, you just need to use the social media service for any length of time—all those lunch pictures, vacation photos, and everything else you upload from your phone, tablet, and/or PC quickly add up. Now you can copy them over to Google Photos, if you wish. The ability to quickly and easily copy Facebook pictures over to Google Photos for safe keeping is part of a larger initiative to foster sharing data between different services. "For almost a decade, we’ve enabled people to download their information from Facebook. The photo transfer tool we’re starting to roll out today is based on code developed through...
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Facebook is testing a new data tool that will enable its users to more easily transfer their uploaded photos over to Google Photos, if that is what they want to do. It is actually available right now to people in Ireland. Worldwide availability is planned for the first half of 2020, and in the meantime, Facebook said it will continue making refinements to the tool. "We want to build practical portability solutions people can trust and use effectively. To foster that trust, people and online services need clear rules about what kinds of data should be portable and who is responsible for protecting that data as it moves to different services. We hope this product can help advance conversations...
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Some fans of the Pixel 4 smartphone who ordered one weren't happy to hear that Google isn't offering free original quality photo uploads to Google Photos. Free original quality uploads had been an offering in the past as a much-appreciated perk for Pixel device owners. A redditor has furthered inflamed those tensions, pointing out that iPhone users have been enjoying unlimited original quality backups on Google Photos for free. Google says that it is a bug, and that it will be addressed. iPhone users get free original quality backups because the iPhone itself saves its images in HEIC format according to Android Police. The format provides a smaller file size than a compressed JPEG that most...
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As some astute observers had already noticed, Google is rolling out a text recognition feature to Google Photos. This allows uses to search and sort through their vast libraries of photographs by blurbs of text, something that was not previously possible, but the functionality does not stop there—Google has another trick up its sleeve. After Google finds whatever photo you are looking for, you can tap on the "Lens" button to copy and paste the text. For example, I searched through my own library of photos for "Pepsi" and Google Photos found a snapshot of a Mountain Dew sign I recently took, as shown in the image at the top of this article. After clicking on the Lens button, I was able to...
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Are you looking for a quick and easy way to organize your smartphone photos? Google may have a solution for you, as it has just introduced Gallery Go, a photo gallery that is intended to work offline. Gallery Go was introduced at the Google for Nigeria event. The gallery automatically organizes a user’s photos by people, selfies, nature, animals, documents, videos and movies without the user needing to manually label their photos. User can also create organizational folders if they would prefer. The app includes simple editing tools as well. Users can rotate and crop their photo, apply filters, and utilize tools such as “auto enhance”. Most importantly, Gallery Go works...
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We haven't talked much about Google Drive and Google Photo over the last year. When we last spoke of Google Drive in 2017, Google Drive file stream was emerging to replace the Google Drive app for both Mac and PC users. In 2018, Google AR Core left beta and landed for Google Photos for Android and iOS. Google is now talking about changes that it is making to how Google Drive and Google Photos work together. Google knows that lots of people store photos and video on both Google Drive and Google Photos. Google says that users have complained that the connection between Drive and Photos is confusing and to fix that it plans to make changes to simplify the experience across Drive and Photos....
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Google today announced that ARCore, its augmented reality SDK for Android devices, has exited the beta phase. Now that ARCore 1.0 is expanding into the public realm, Google says that developers are free to publish their AR apps directly to the Play Store. For developers that have been sitting on the sideline waiting for a wider release, now is the time to get started. According to Google, ARCore is supported on over 100 million Android smartphones, which cover 13 specific models from a number of manufactures. These devices include: Google Pixel Google Pixel XL Google Pixel 2 Google Pixel 2 XL Samsung Galaxy S8 Samsung Galaxy S8+ Samsung Galaxy Note8 Samsung Galaxy S7 Samsung Galaxy S7 edge LG...
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Do you backup your files and photos on a regular basis? Most of us know that we should be backing up our data, but for one reason or another—usually the inconvenience of it all—we don't. That is like playing with fire, especially if you have important files that you either cannot afford to lose, or would strongly prefer you didn't. Well, Google is making things easier with a new app for both PC and Mac systems. It is called Backup and Sync and it works with both Google Drive and Google Photos. This is something Google aimed to release last month but was delayed for some last minute tweaking. It is now ready to download, and with it users can backup and sync just about anything on their storage...
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We all have that musty box in our attic filled with the old photographs we never got around to digitizing. The digitization process can be incredibly time consuming and costly. However, Google just introduced its PhotoScan app to make saving those precious photos easier than ever. Why did Google just release PhotoScan? According to Google Photos Software Engineer Jingyu Cui, “After all that time in the attic, your photos might need a few polishes. Or you might even want to edit that selfie from this morning. Getting the right look can take a lot of time and with so many editing tools it’s tough to know where to begin.” PhotoScan is a standalone app companion to Google Photos. The app...
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Google just recently announced that its Photos service—the one it introduced only a year ago and that replaced Picasa—is now used by around 200 million people, who've collectively uploaded 13.7 petabytes of pics, including 24 billion selfies. It's a well liked service, to state the obvious, and for Nexus owners, it's going to get even better with Google planning to remove the data cap on how many original size photos users can upload.As it currently stands, you can choose between two storage options, High quality and Original. If you choose the High quality option, Google will give you unlimited storage space for your photos and videos, but it caps photos at 16 megapixels and videos at 1080p....
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Picasa had a long run, but it’s time for the software application to say goodnight. Picasa came into existence over a decade ago in 2002, and became a popular destination for people looking to organize their vast library of photos and photos. This, however, was before “the cloud” took over for our mass storage needs. In 2004, Google acquired Picasa and has maintained the service ever since. Google Photos launched last May as an offshoot of Google+ Photos and has blossomed into a well-rounded, cloud-centric photo and video management service. And rather than keep devoting resources to Picasa in an effort to adapt it to the needs of today’s desktop and mobile users, Google has decided to kill it...
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Did you goof up by purchasing a smartphone with a measly amount of onboard storage? There are some costly solutions, like upgrading to a new device or adding a microSD memory card, assuming your phone has a microSD card slot (everyone point and snicker at the iPhone crowd). Or you can go the cheap route again and start deleting stuff. Heck, Google will even help you by removing photos you've already backed up to the cloud.All those selfies, food shots, and other photos that littler social media tend to add up quick and consume a lot of storage. If you don't have a lot of storage to begin with, you might find yourself constantly deleting apps and sifting through photo and videos to rid your phone...
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It was right around five months when Google Photos gained its own identity outside of Google+ as a standalone application, and in that time it's attracted over 100 million monthly active users, Google revealed in a blog post today. To celebrate the milestone, Google compiled a list of interesting data based on the photos people take. For example, Google notes that "you're all foodies... or at least you want people to think you are." Besides people, food is what Google Photos users take pictures of the most, Google says. No surprise there considering that social networks are often littered with posts about what friends and family members had for lunch, dinner, and so forth. As far as events go,...
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Google is getting ready to say goodnight to Google+ Photos (oh no!) as the service is set to expire on August 1, 2015, but Google Photos will live on (phew!). Confused? It's all about the "+" symbol. The photo service that Google is shutting down is the one that's built into its Google+ social network, while the one it's going full steam ahead with is its standalone Google Photos service launched back in May. While it's unlikely Google would ever state this publicly, the shuttering of Google+ Photos is partially an admission that its social network isn't on the level of Facebook, or even close. Had Google+ taken off the way the company hoped it would, the standalone Google Photos service probably...
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When Google announced in May that it was offering unlimited photo and video storage for free via its revamped Photos app, there was much celebration. Confetti poured out from building windows onto the streets, enemies became friends, and the nation's leaders declared and end to all conflicts, finally ushering in an era of world peace.Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. However, what Google did was pretty awesome, and having an unlimited bin in the cloud was just part of the story. The retooled app made it even easier to organize your images and videos, tag people, and search through large libraries without needing to use complex terms and descriptors.Oh, but there was a catch, only we...
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