Monthly Archives: March 2016

Google Photos introduces non-destructive editing on Android

Google Photos, Mobile

Yay! Previously, editing an image on Android would generate a new copy with edits baked in, whereas on iOS & Web edited images were written in place (recording edits as metadata while retaining the original pixels). Per the team post:

Sometimes it takes multiple edits to get a photo just right – or you change your mind and decide the original was perfect just the way it was.

With today’s update for Android, editing is now fully reversible and non-destructive. So you can save your edits or save a new copy of the photo – either way, the original photo will remain untouched.

This update (v1.17) is rolling out now in the Play Store.

The Google Nik Collection plug-ins are now free to download

Photography

Power to the people!

Starting March 24, 2016, the latest Nik Collection will be freely available to download: Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveza, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro and Dfine. If you purchased the Nik Collection in 2016, you will receive a full refund, which we’ll automatically issue back to you in the coming days.

We’re excited to bring the powerful photo editing tools once only used by professionals to even more people now.

[Via]

Google Photos introduces smarter albums

Google Photos

Watch this:

The team post offers a nice summary:

You take a lot of photos, but you don’t always have time to organize and share them. Picking out the best photos and making an album – especially after a trip – is time consuming. More often than not, you never share those photos and they end up sitting on your phone or computer.

Starting today, Google Photos will suggest a new album for you after an event or trip, curated with just your best shots. It’ll add maps to show how far you traveled and location pins to remember where you went.

You can customize it, add captions, and turn on collaboration to let others add their photos. Before you know it, you’ll have a beautiful album ready to share.

You should see the change automatically as long as you’re on the latest version of the app.

[YouTube]

Namaste!

Photography

Hi from Nepal, everyone!

I’m enjoying some very rare downtime & connectivity before getting some shut-eye in advance of our 48-hour hackathon. I have so much to share, but uploading through a cocktail straw is nobody’s idea of fun, so most will have to wait. In very brief: Yesterday we celebrated Holi at an orphanage; today we helped villagers rebuild (such a minor contribution, really, but it felt good to help such welcoming folks); and tomorrow we get busy trying to create technologies & services that might be of use here & beyond. It’s such a privilege to come here and learn. I’ll share more as soon as time & tech permit.

Holi-Nack

[Photo courtesy of Alex Osterloh, with whom I treated myself to a dawn fly-by of Everest, below]

A video posted by John Nack (@jnack) on

Check out Google’s Chrome Music Lab

Miscellaneous

I’m eager to show the Micronaxx this marriage of educational experiments with boundary-pushing Web tech:




According to the team blog,

You can play with sound, rhythm, melody, and more. Chrome Music Lab is all built for the web, so you can start playing instantly, whether you’re on a tablet, phone, or laptop. Just like today’s Clara Rockmore doodle, the experiments are all built with the Web Audio API, a freely-accessible, open web standard that lets developers create and manipulate sound right in the browser. We’re also providing open-source code so that others can build new experiments based on what we’ve started.

[YouTube]