Using Google Photos for Efficient Photo Organization

1. Introduction to Google Photos

In addition, Google Photos is a fantastic place to find duplicate and similar photos, poor photos, and screenshots, as well as boring videos, which all take up storage without offering any significant value to the user. Those trash features seem quite helpful, as I find myself very often with a pocket full of screenshots here and there that are pretty much useless not long after I take them.

Also, the Google machine learning algorithms apply smart features to some images, including an assistant that creates automatic photo stories, movies, collages, fun tweaks to your photos, and stylized images, to name a few.

The best part about Google Photos, though, is how it helps organize all stored photos and videos. Google Photos automatically groups images according to the time period when they were taken, as well as the location where they were captured for certain photos. The app creates photo albums for each of these cohorts, and it makes it really easy for you to share an entire album with others.

Google Photos can store any JPEG images and MP4 video recordings, as well as other file formats for photos and videos, including PNG, GIF, WEBP, and TIFF. In addition, users who upload HEIF images, as well as 4K videos, will have those file formats converted into a standard resolution JPEG photo with unlimited storage.

First of all, Google Photos is a fantastic service to store your photos safely. It allows users with a free Google account to store up to 15 GB of photos and videos at a resolution of 16MP for photos and 1080p for videos. This is pretty much the standard resolution for most photos taken with regular smartphones and high-definition cameras, so most users do not have to worry about running out of space anytime soon.

So, the first thing I want to do is introduce you to Google Photos and why exactly it's such a great service. Google Photos is a fantastic place to store your photos and videos, and it's an outstanding tool to organize all of them.

2. Uploading and Managing Photos in Google Photos

Here, "High quality" resolution refers to the lower resolution scheme, which does not count against your Google account's storage limit. Media stored in "High quality" doesn't take up any Google Account storage for users who are using Google Workspace editions like Academic, Enterprise, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Education Standard, and Education Plus. The "Original" resolution refers to the higher resolution scheme, which will count against your account storage. If you use the "Original" quality setting, back up your content at a resolution of up to the maximum of your phone's camera or storage limit. If you opt for this setting, after pressing the "Back up & sync" button, you'll be asked to join the Google One service if you aren't already a subscriber. Great deals on storage plans are available for Google One members. Install the Google Photos Uploader on your Windows or Mac device if you're on a non-cellular or Wi-Fi-only data plan. If you decide to do so, you can select a preferred upload size or choose to upload the photos at their original size and quality.

After starting the Google Photos app, sign in if prompted with your Google account to begin the process of uploading and organizing your photos. Upon signing in, enable the setting to do so by clicking on the button or checkbox or the like that reads "Back up & sync." You might have to select photos to back up. You can also select which folders you want to sync. For example, Google Photos can back up all the photo folders on your phone or just the Camera folder. You can also choose to back up videos. After clicking the "Back up & sync" button, you'll be prompted to choose an "upload size." You can select either "High quality," where your photos and videos will be loaded at 16 megapixels or 1080p resolution for all media uploaded after June 1, 2021, or "Original," which lets you upload your content at full, lossless resolution.

3. Organizing Photos with Albums and Tags

In Google Photos, batches of similar photos can be automatically grouped into one album. When browsing photos, if "Faces" or "Things" is clicked, the photos are automatically categorized by contents. If a person is identified in the photo, click the person's face, and the function will automatically categorize the person's photos into an album. By repeating the process, you can create a personalized photo collection. It is also possible to manually create new albums and categorize them manually. However, even if all photos were stored in albums, this organization would be superficial and a bit of a poor use of such a powerful tool. The categorization of photos only fine-tunes the search results. What is actually needed here is to use tags and text for better photo album organization.

I have mentioned several times before that putting photos into albums did not categorize those photos or make it easier to find photos within the album. However, Google Photos has a feature called Tags for identifying people and objects, as well as a name search function, that categorizes photos in albums, making finding photos in albums very efficient. With this in mind, photo organization based on albums and tags becomes a very good method. Finally, I will introduce a method for creating links to other photos within Google Photos to encourage viewers to view related photos beyond the individual photos in the album of past travel memories and experiences.

4. Utilizing Google Photos Search and Assistant Features

Are you a frequent traveler? If so, the Assistant feature in Google Photos will make sharing a lot easier. It allows Google Photos to create a sharable album (as a simple link) for a specific geographic location. By enabling "Group similar faces", Google Photos will group the photos together for faster review and decisions to save or delete. The "Assistant" feature will also walk you through how to transfer photos from mobile devices and cameras to the cloud with ease. Got a lot of media from an event? Google Assistant can auto-compose collages too. Ideal for events and party organizers, especially if you require sharing JPEG images with the attendees. The same principle can also be applied with auto-creating animations (great for party invites) and applying color corrections and fades. Would it come in handy to automatically save the receipt of a purchased product? Do it! The Google Assistant can assist by creating a movie or story using your collections. The Google Photos Assistant feature is chock-full of other nifty options available.

Another exclusive feature of Google Photos is the search functionality. Google Photos can perform object and theme recognition within an image and index faces for easy search and filtering. The search functionality might return incorrect results for certain searches, but even with these minor flaws, it can still save you a lot of manual effort finding a particular image from your photo collection. You can even do a search for an emoji (e.g., sunglasses, cat), and Google Photos will return images that are related to that emoji. Additionally, Google Photos has image similarity recognition. It can identify if two or more images are related to each other when searching; for example, searching "water", Google Photos would return a set of similar imagery displaying a beach, ocean, etc. Also, the search feature is also capable of facial recognition. This means that if the search engine detects a face in a photo, it is then indexed separately in the search results. This makes it a great tool to locate images featuring family members and friends.

5. Sharing and Collaborating on Photos in Google Photos

Moreover, comments will not be shown unless you explicitly agree. For all collaborators in any shared album, they must be aware that other contributors with the same access level can also change the album settings. For example, someone who has sharing capability can invite others, and someone who has sharing and adding capability can add new photos to the album, place it in collections, or create a Shared Album title or description. Although all contributors must agree to add photos, any one individual can add more than a couple of various photos at once.

Collaborating on albums: When you share an album with others, you can decide on their level of access, including what type of items they can add, and whether or not they get admin permissions. Collaboration lets anyone you invite view and contribute to the album; they can also create and share their version of the group album.

When someone is trying to share an album or item with you, you may be asked to recommend photos. You can do this by swiping up and touching or clicking "Add photos" to find and suggest photos based on faces and location from the original album or memories that may be relevant.

Share with others: When you share photos with someone, they will also get a copy of the photo added to their photo library. This provides a convenient way of sharing large quantities of images without sharing separate links to each image. However, this feature is only free if your shared items are set to high quality. If you are using the original, shared items will count double against your Google storage.