Kit – my phone has just this second updated google photos.

If you got to the menu and select device folders you will see local photo storage in there (camera) as well as other app folders like twitter etc.

Ah, missed that Stoner, although it’s still annoying that it’s not the default option and is not organised in the same way.

Going to look for a better photo viewing app!

if you open camera and slide sideways you will go through local images in the camera folder. picasatool is probably still available if you are after another viewing app though

Anyone not paying for the storage, and relying on the “under 16Mp goes free” thing, have you *checked* they’re not dicking with the image?

E.g. md5sum the orginal, download the copy google store and md5sum that?

(and then if they’re different, also compare the size)

Didn’t like Picassa Tool, but Quickpic works pretty well, cheers Stoner.

Anyone not paying for the storage, and relying on the “under 16Mp goes free” thing, have you *checked* they’re not dicking with the image?

They’re open about the fact that they are dicking with the image – they’re running their own compression algorithm on them.

E.g. md5sum the orginal, download the copy google store and md5sum that?

Almost all the photos I’ve uploaded are from mobile phone cameras, so I doubt that they can do much damage and I don’t care too much if they degrade a little bit.

Right, but how much? Just interested in a comparison.

IA, no idea what I just did, but I think I ran md5sums correctly on two files for comparison.

DL.jpg is direct from phone, Photo.jpg is downloaded from google photos of back up of Original from phone.

The search feature is freakishly amazing; I’ve tried dog, beard, glasses and they all seem to work.

You’ve got to hand it to Google… for whatever faults they have, they are damned clever and have some great ideas. They have changed the world we live in, in much the same way as Steve Jobs did.

My uploads are chugging away on my laptop at home, so I keep getting distracted at work by new animations and stories – I’ve just looked at my trip to Manchester velodrome two years ago. I’m enjoying seeing all the old photos of my kids and a beardless me 🙂

interesting about the md5sums. thought most sites frigged with exif data? or maybe they only do that for the versions displayed within the browser when viewing google+, flickr, etc. websites and not the backup image?

got the new photos app almost insantly, ie the same night that they mentioned it at google IO conf. (but it is a Nexus 5, so probably skips the queue a bit). edit: and pretty sure it showed local files when I had a very quick peek.

Interesting thread. I tried Picasa but gave up, never use Google+ (have an account). Hopefully this will put Apple under pressure to offer the same which is what I really want.

IA, no idea what I just did,

For those unsure what Stoner just did at my request (cheers!), it shows that the file he downloaded from google is bit-for-bit* identical with what he uploaded, google didn’t compress or alter it at all.

*ok ok, technically they could do something VERY clever and change it but then fudge the data to get a hash collision as md5s aint that hot. But I really really doubt that’s the case!

would you have been able to make any deductions about compression if the checksums had come back different?

For those unsure what Stoner just did at my request, it shows that the file he downloaded from google is bit-for-bit* identical with what he uploaded, google didn’t compress or alter it at all.

I wonder if they have a threshold limit where it’s not work them compressing further than JPEG? Or, it could be that they’ve not switched on the extra compression yet but could in the future?

The only issue I’m having is lots of photos on my Mac (now in photos, used to be in iPhoto) are from my digital (non phone) camera. There’s no share option to Google Photos so not sure how to upload those…

would you have been able to make any deductions about compression if the checksums had come back different?

Nope, would need file sizes and/or detailed exif etc information to know that. The checksum’s a good first test though as it answers the question “have google messed with this”

I wonder if they have a threshold limit where it’s not work them compressing further than JPEG?

Almost certainly. Though I suspect they do recompress to “different” jpeg.

The threshold for them will I suspect be heat/power related. Data centres are driven by their power costs (which are affected by cooling needs). So it’ll less likely be a raw space constraint as cpu effort to compress vs. storage power needed for the extra capacity etc etc.

Whatever google do I’d still want my own backup solution in place mind, but google photos ontop of an existing setup seems like a not bad option.

There’s no share option to Google Photos so not sure how to upload those…

Is there not a google photos uploader tool? Point it at your pics? A photos/iphoto library is just a folder really, “show package contents”

It is jolly clever… just had a notification of an animation it’s created

Is there not a google photos uploader tool? Point it at your pics? A photos/iphoto library is just a folder really, “show package contents”

Picasa.

I’ using the uploader from https://photos.google.com/apps – choose the “desktop uploader”. It’s been uploading for 24 hours now and has 17,935 left of 22,792 images/videos that are in my My Photos folder, though it’s going much faster since I changed the power options on the laptop so it didn’t sleep after a few hours…

At the current rate of upload I think it will be a few weeks before my backup is complete.

Been using Google+ photos for while. Really like the auto awesome thing and the way it creates stories. Got 30k+ photos loaded into Picasa so I think I may set them uploading as well.

Yeah, photos was the only part of G+ that I used 🙂

miketually – Member
Yeah, photos was the only part of G+ that I used

Me too. Seems with a small amount of faff I can still use it and access the full Snapseed functions through there.

For now…

Game changer?

Nope. Flickr have been doing 1TB for ages and that’s easily enough for just about everyone.

Stoner – Member
Im a picasa man and have completely ignored google+ as it’s utter shit.

Still don’t get the hate for G+. Do you mean in terms of social network or just the photo side? Photos perhaps. Social network, couldn’t agree less. You just have to get your head round it being a topic based network of like minded posts and the control that circles gives you and suddenly you realise how powerful it is compared to the inane bollocks of FB and twitter. Just don’t expect to see your real life friends on there, which turns out is a good thing.

The photo stuff though I’ve never been too keen on as I’m tied to Flickr and G+ Photos up until now has been confusing and I’m not keen on the automatic adjustments. Picasa is a horrible mess and pain in the backside to use.

Personally I manage my own photos in plain folders on my PC with RAW and edits, then store them on my NAS and backed up to OneDrive. Those that are actually worthy of online albums go into Flick albums. Those that are just inane bollocks about what I ate at lunch go into FB etc.

Google Photos just created a little video out of photos the kids took of themselves running around naked. This is what gets people put onto registers, isn’t it?

Has anyone got an idea how the upload order is determined other than just “random”? 😆

(18,705 files, 16,765 left….)

Anyone got any pros/cons of Google’s new Photos versus Apple’s iCloud Photo Library? The latter seems to be working for me but at a £ cost. I’m interested in Google’s clever searching since tagging photos is a pain I only occasionally get round to. Also, is there any automatic face-recognition like in Picasa?

That time I was on the TV wearing a ruff… https://goo.gl/photos/7jGTU69gyURGAq6E9

The android app had lost a lot of functionality, the edit feature used to be quite handy with the ability to tweak shadow etc. Not you can’t even crop to ratio.

just looking at the upload options it gives high quality or original (which counts against your quota)

that isnt free unlimited storage is it. or am i missing something? Do i just set it to high quality?

It seems ‘high quality’ compression doesn’t kick in unless pics are in excess of 16mp …. might be wrong.

It finished uploading overnight!

Some of the dates for the photos are bit off, but that could be the camera at the time. That affect anyone else?

Yep same here. Not too bothered. What does worry me is that when I gave it 5000 images to upload it skipped 3000 of them 🙁

A couple of questions for those with more bandwidth/fewer photos;

All the reports say that it groups by People, Places and Things. I’m not getting the People grouping. Maybe that’s because I’m still uploading?

What happens when I make changes to images (rotate, crop etc) – will the Uploader sync that change? What about dates?

Where can I change the tags that are being applied to make the Groups? There are a few errors and I’d like to fix them.

Ta

11,732 still to go….

I’m back..

It would appear that “People” isn’t available in all countries. Any UK folk have it or are we on the exclusion list?

Removing photos from automatic Grouping is done on the mobile app, not from the PC. Just select the group then click the “3 dots” top right menu icon and there’s an option to “Remove results”. Click all the photos you want to remove.

11,674

Glad to see you can still revert back to Google+. I much, much prefer that and the editing tools are way better.

But… is Google+ photos doomed then? I can’t find any information on if and when it’s completely replaced by google photos.