Google Photos Review 2021

A few weeks ago I wrote an article speculating if Amazon photos was a viable alternative to Google photos. Following that article, I reviewed Amazon photos last week. Today I’m writing a review of Google photos.

I have been using Google Photos for a number of years. Mainly due to the fact that my smartphones are running Android. So I have been using Google Photos by default. Since reviewing Amazon Photo last week I have taken a fresh look at the app on my Samsung Galaxy S9 and the web-based application.

The Google photos app is free and is part of the Google account which includes 15Gb of storage space for free. This allowance covers all files such as videos and will include storage of your emails should you decide to use Gmail. Extra storage is available with Google One which starts at £15.99 a year in the UK.

Google Photos On Android

You can set up Google Photos to automatically backup any photos you take with your phone to online storage. Which will keep your photos safe. You will need to go into your phone settings to do so.

If you open a photo within the application you are given a number of options to edit the phone. Including an automatic setting if you have upgraded your account to Google one further options are available to you.

One of the new features that I found during recent testing is the lens function which uses the Google search engines to search the web for any matching images. I tested it with a photo of a local beach and it suggested a number of similar-looking images, but none of them was for the same beach. Could be useful if you were searching for information on something specific such as a sign.

The other new tool Google has recently added probably because of the changes Google are making to photo allowances from June 2021. They have added a new utility that checks to see if any space can be freed up your online storage. The utility freeded up about 40 Megabytes of storage during testing.

The utility section of the Google photos application also includes functionality to create animation from photos. Allowing you to take a number of photos that were taken at about the same time and stitch them together. I thought the animation utility worked really well during my test.

You can also create a collage of photos. The Google photo application also supports the making of video from a number of selected photos. A music track is added to the video which is basically a slideshow of your selected photo. I thought it was a bit limited and I would have liked to have had some more control over the process such as selecting the backing track from a selection of musical tracks.

Google Photos As A Web Application

Clicking on a photo will open the photo within the web browser. Once the photo is open a number of options become available for use with that photo. Should you need them.

The Google photos web application supports the editing of photos including a number of photographic styles as well as providing an autosuggestion function to clean up the image. As well as the predefined edits provided by the application. You also have the ability to manually manage a number of attributes related to the photo colour and light. You can also manually change the aspect ratio and rotate the photo.

The Google photo web application will allow photos to be added to photo albums. Allowing related photos to be grouped together.

The Google photo web application also offers a range of utilities similar to those offered on the Android app such as animation and video. It will also at time offer suggestions on things you might want to create from your photos. One of the suggestions recommended to me was the ability to create a panorama view from a number of photos I took on a beach.