[Closed] Google photos

This is good news.

I've been automatically sticking all my photos into G+ for a few years now, but it was starting to eat into my Drive storage and the older photos sat on my laptop were only backed up onto various CDs and an external hard drive.

Looks like I need to boot up the laptop and start it uploading.

Great for most people, but for ' power users' using it as a back up service it's less suitable as they compress the images.

Now I just find out to see who holds the copyright on photos you upload...

Same as most services like this; you retain copyright but also grant Google the right to do whatever they want with your images. It's a free service and this is the price you pay if you choose to use it.

"All your photos are belong to us"

It's picasa with a shiny new url, which had unlimited 2k images and 15GB larger ones.

Unlimited large images is nice though.

oh no, i barely understand googlePLUS photos, now theres google photos too?

im struggling to manage my photos as it is between g+ and g+photos, sharing, uploading..... will this make it easier? (please say yes) 😀

A cunning way to get people to use Google+ rather than Facebook perhaps? Does anyone regularly use Google+ ?, I have an account but I have a look once every few months.

I thought below a certain size they did anyway.

A cunning way to get people to use Google+ rather than Facebook perhaps? Does anyone regularly use Google+ ?, I have an account but I have a look once every few months.

Does anyone regularly use Google+ ?

G+ will soon be an integral part of Google's ranking algorithms. So major brands will shortly diving into it fully, followed by smaller brands and then (if the plan pans out) consumers will follow.

Just had a play. Not convinced. Yet

(Felt the same way when I switched from Picasa to Google+)

for ' power users' using it as a back up service it's less suitable as they compress the images.

Only if they're over a certain size, I think?

Doesn't say that, it explicitly says that the image stored is compressed.

It compresses if they are over 16 megapixels - this is the unlimited storage.

If you choose the uncompressed versions it goes against your storage limits.

They claim that the compression is invisible to the human eye, even zoomed in.

It compresses if they are over 16 megapixels

I don't think that's how it reads.

We [b]maintain the original resolution up to 16MP[/b] for photos, and 1080p high-definition for videos, and [b]store compressed versions of the photos[/b] and videos in beautiful, print-quality resolution.

to me that says we keep the original resolution up to 16MP, above that it gets knocked back (assuming to 16MP), and then the image is stored as a compressed version.

I think for most people that will be fine, but I don't think it's suitable if anyone is thinking of using it specifically as a back up of originals.

I think for most people that will be fine, but I don't think it's suitable if anyone is thinking of using it specifically as a back up of originals.

We maintain the original resolution up to 16MP

So that's, what, a 5Mb .jpg or a 50Mb .raw file? If you need better than that you should probably be paying for storage, no?

No, it's maintaining the same resolution (1024x768 for example) but applying a higher compression algorithm which will be lossy.

So I've already sync'd my mobile but I've got 10 years worth of assorted photos and videos stored on my laptop and backed up on a failing shonky NAS drive.

Duplicates in places, lots of photos I've taken for ebay listings that I don't want, and other assorted rubbish.

Whats best, spend a weekend deleting rubbish and duplicates or just upload the whole lot? Will it flag duplicates or at least group them together so its easy to delete them later?

im having the usual mare with mine. problem seems to be the photos in g+photos arent the same as google photos.

1. am i right in thinking that the new google photos is the same as the 'photos' section of google+. and the google+ photo app is different, and will be defunct soon, so only the photos in google+ will be accessible?

2. if i go to the g+ photos app, i see some photos and video files just as blank squares or clapperboard logo. if i click them it just says 'video processing' and hangs. any reason for this?

3. the app suggests its finishing soon, so go to google photos instead etc etc, when i do this i expect to see the same pics as ive just seen in the app. but theres loads missing, pics and albums, theres maybe only three quarters of the albums/pics in the app. why arent they exactly the same?

thanks. im really struggling with google photos and syncing.

I'm with Cougar - what's going on?

Why have my photos stopped auto-uploading.
Where's the video I've just uploaded to Youtube gone?

I've been using Picasa for yonks but Google are really starting to get my goat - searching my own photos is becoming almost impossible, and I now have no idea what's where. AAgh!

Cool Google photos trick: you can search for things at the top like "cat" or "sky" or whatever and it runs through your photos and matches them even if you haven't tagged them using some neural net machine learny magic. Not sure how many object classes it can find but pretty impressive.

No way to organise/re-order photos in an album? Grrr.

If a company gives you something for free, you're not the customer, you're the product.

Im a picasa man and have completely ignored google+ as it's utter shit. But since google photos seems far more sensible I shall give it a go. Just trying out embedding google photo in a thread, can you guys tell me whether you can see this one please?

[img] https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/EGcs2HAdMNocMWVAbKEXY3GHnHJ_9S4iLL4lcWndAC0=w845-h634-no [/img]

and if I manually change the dimensions how about this one

[img] https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/EGcs2HAdMNocMWVAbKEXY3GHnHJ_9S4iLL4lcWndAC0=w640-h634-no [/img]

EDIT I can see them OK BTW, I need to check there's no cookieboolox invovled, and the manual size changes seem to work. 640 wide has always seemed best on STW.

Yep - both are there, same size. The top one looks sharper though.

cheers onion.
The top one is at "original" pixels 845 x 634

the second one I changed the url to say w=640 but left H unchanged. The ratio seems to sort itself out I think.

The sky in both images is littered with digital artifacts. The bottom is visibly worse, though. Was the photo taken on a smartphone?

yeah, taken on a v shitty lens'd (I broke the original) Nexus 4. TBH, quality is not what Im after, but being able to link/embed photos in threads easily.

whats a digital artifcat, coz Im damned if I can see them.

"w845-h634" seems to be the default image size, but I have no idea what res my phone is taking them in.

[img] https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/L83l0udW3dVGODptj23C-_jkmWxiM42qizlxElCs1UY=w845-h634-no [/img]

whats a digital artifcat, coz Im damned if I can see them.

Have a look at the borders, e.g. where the mountains meet the sky. Lots of artifacts there where the colour denoise is attempting to figure out where one colour ends and the other begins.

And also colour banding in the sky, especially on the right hand side.

(I used to work for an SoC vendor that cared quite a bit about image quality, though I'm far from being an expert; that photo would have broken their hearts).

Not worked out how to post pictures from the app yet. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Due to living in 'broadband poverty', it's taken about 3 days to upload 1500 photos from my phone! I like what I'm seeing so far. Might save me from using flickr as my image backup. Some of the background trickery is pretty neat as well.

Wait for a few days time when some of your photos magically get "auto-awesomed" 🙂

Muggo, there's no way of extracting the online image url from the app you have to get it from photos.google.com

I've been uploading 10 years of old pictures and getting loads of new "stories" made by the magic Google machine in the sky. Quite neat to look back and I doubt I'd have looked through them otherwise.

Fastest way to upload for me is 4G - 25Mbps speed in my house.

Thanks Stoner. The copy link button had me thinking it might be possible from the app.

I'm about 3000 photos in to uploading 23000...

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

The search feature is great. My "bike" album is full of lovely pictures of my old bikes.

The Google Photos app is pants now - only shows photos which are uploaded, rather than photos on your phone. I read that this is a great space saver, but what if you want to look at your photos a) before they've synced and b) any time you're not online/got crap internet?

Otherwise, yay for unlimited storage.

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.

[img] https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/SrVi7Pe6AIpgISzdD-zSZ7G4anIqTmG6caTrcK1aj5c=w667-h577-no [/img]

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

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
[img] https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/vmBLSJfFrAXbbIVhYeaTUh10l9cc0jzFRGCewV6tmLI=w808-h606-no [/img]

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"

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

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.