Google’s mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” A huge amount of that information is photographic (a trillion+ photos per year), and a huge amount of that is private.
Today Google Photos brings amazing search power to your pocket, letting you back up a lifetime of photos & videos—for free*—and have a virtual assistant organize them, then create amazing movies, stories, animations, and more. Check it out now on iOS, Android, and Web.
The search stuff is amazing. As my teammate Vincent Mo writes, “Can’t remember the name of that beer you had while on vacation? Search for ‘beer in Los Angeles.’ Ya, it actually works.” (I just tried it & dang, he’s right!)
My part of the team has been working hard on an ultra-streamlined yet powerful image editor, and I’ll post more details about that (and about how it relates to Snapseed) soon. I’ve also been responsible for the Movies feature that automatically creates movies from your moments (or lets you make them on the fly), plus collages, animations, and more (we’re just getting warmed up). From the team blog post:
The app can also help you quickly enhance photos and combine them in new ways to help you relive your life’s moments. In one tap, get instant adjustments tuned to the photo’s color, lighting, and subject to make each photo look its best. Press the “+” button to create your own collages, animations, movies with soundtracks, and more.
If you swipe to the left, you’ll open the Assistant view, where we’ll suggest new things made with your photos and videos, such as a collage or a story based on a recent trip you took. After previewing the creation, you can choose to keep, edit, or discard it.
As I say, I’ll share more details soon. In the meantime, we’d love to know what you think! If you have questions, ask ‘em here or check out the new help community.
Happy shooting,
J.
*Seriously? Yes, seriously. We maintain the original resolution up to 16MP for photos, and 1080p high-definition for videos. If you want to store really high-res stuff, uncompressed raw images, etc., you still get an additional 15GB of free storage, and after that storage is super cheap (two bucks a month for 100GB, ten for 1000).
[YouTube]
Any love for the desktop? Nearly all of my photos live on my Windows machine.
So I click on the “Web” link, and some photos taken from a long-discarded tablet a few years ago pop up. I’d totally forgotten about them. Que Twilight Zone theme…
Check out http://photos.google.com/apps to grab the uploaders for Windows & Mac. You just set ’em and forget ’em; they’ll background-upload all your images from the locations you specify.
Will it convert and upload RAW?
Yep—we support raw images from hundreds of cameras, and I store thousands of DNG files in my account.
If you have a 24MP camera, free becomes $100/year. Sigh.
Where do you get the $100/year number? 100 gigs would cost you $24/year. 1000 gigs costs $120/year. As a guy with a 20MPx DSLR that cost over $1000 just for the body, may I submit that folks who are as serious as we are about imaging can stand to kick in $24-120/yr. to preserve their work. 🙂