Can I just tell you how much I love Google Photos? The tool makes my blogging life so much easier. In my last post, I highlighted some of my favorite pics of my husband from this past year. Know how long it took me to find those photos?
About two minutes.
To use Google Photos you sign up for a Google account. Then you download the app onto your mobile device. It’s in the Google Play Store for Androids and the iTunes App store for iPhones.
When your images show up in the app, you can sync them to your account so you can access them in a browser. Or share the images with friends, or send it to WordPress so you can create a blog post on-the-spot-using the WordPress app. Here is a screencast from my iPhone showing how it works:
You can also change it so the images auto-sync in your app settings.
Once the images are in my computer browser, I can play away. For instance, I can choose a date to find images from the past or I can search a person or a location. I can even use the tool to fine-tune my results as seen in this screencast:
For yesterday’s post, I searched for images of Chris then focused on the past year. When I picked out my favorites and clicked on the dots on each image to select it, I downloaded them and dragged them in to my WordPress media library. Then I used the /Classic block>Add Image>Create Gallery options to show the mosaic.
I’ll leave those images I quickly, randomly chose because they kind of make me giggle 🙂 Especially that one of Hudi in the goggles, right after the word “Laugh.”
Other benefits of Google Photos:
1. When I go on a trip, it marks my locations and when I get home, it notifies me of a “book” it made of my travels, using its algorithms to find the perfect pics of the visit away. That saves me tons of time.
2. It auto-enhances images and offers the changed shots as suggestions. Sometimes the results are stunning. If not, it’s easy enough to delete the suggestion.
3. It’s great from creating albums to share privately with people. This is really nice when we record dance class clips or want to share certain images with friends that, and we don’t feel like emailing or Drop Box-ing. Select the photos then choose to create a private album and share then type in their email address. That’s all there is to it!
If any of you have any other tools or tricks to suggest, I’d love to hear in the comments. For me? Well, I’m off to go back to my images and take a trip down memory lane. The images are making me happy.
