If you’re not using Google Photos you really should be. It takes everything you shoot and automatically backs up pictures and videos, even putting together special animations, mashups and stylised shots without you having to do a thing. You can get curated albums for special days and events, and even free storage provided you opt for a lower resolution backup.
It’s really neat, and it’s about to get better. Google announced a few new developments for Photos at its major event this week, and those updates are rolling out now. The main one is that it’s really easy to send photos and video from Google Photos to a screen using Chromecast, something which many people will find useful. The feature gives you a lot of control over what and how you share your phone screen as well, so people won’t be able to see everything on your display.
You’ll also now be able to merge photos from multiple users onto one Google Photos account, perfect for familes who are constantly snapping. It goes further though to create a way for communities to share – like being able to create a public album during a live event and getting images from all kinds of angles and devices. That sounds very cool.
You can also use tags to identify people in photos, so you can easily find them later and even mix your searches to find a certain person at a location and date or time.