Happy 10th Birthday, Google Photos

Editing tools have come a long way, but watch out for the pricey Auto Backup tool

Ten years ago David Lieb, then a senior exec at Google, invited Sean Fujiwara and myself, under the auspices of USA TODAY, to Google’s binocular adorned Venice, California headquarters to tell us about a radical new initiative for Google.

AI take on thousands of photos

He told us about Google Photos, the new app and website where we could store all of our photos, in one place, something that was very hard to do then.

“We think that photos and videos are broken,“ Lieb told me back then. “Photos and videos are really the main way that we remember our lives, and yet it's super difficult for us to just organize our memories, let alone relive them. So we think it's a fundamental problem that needs to be solved in the world.”

The good news is, it is way easier now, thanks to Google. But the problem still hasn’t been totally solved.

Google’s big selling point: Lieb said we didn’t have to tag or label any of our images; Google would just find them for us, automatically, through people search. As we all know, that doesn’t always work; but kudos to Google for having generally excellent search. Apple has great search on iPhones; but on iCloud, the service that is similar to Google Photos, it doesn’t even have a search tab!

Google Photos was initially free for the first six years of its life; it moved to a confusing payment system in 2021, but also added many cool editing features that weren’t initially part of the process.

Before we go into them, some eye-opening stats that Google released on its birthday, which was Wednesday.

—1.5 billion people use Google Photos monthly.

—Some 9 trillion photos and videos are stored on the service.

—We use Google Photos to search for photos, to the tune of 370 million monthly searches.

Google Photos is still a place to store photos and videos, and quickly find them without having to scroll through hundreds of photos in our camera roll. But beyond basic edits like crop, tweaking the exposure and marking up a photo, Google Photos also has several other new editing features which take advantage of AI:

• Change the color of a sky.

• Erase people or objects from a photo with the Magic Eraser tool.

• Unblur. As in take an out of focus photo and put it back in focus.

With Google Photos Magic Eraser I took out my shadow

The sky replacement, which many of us use by subscribing to Adobe’s expensive Photoshop program (rates start at $9.99 monthly, but I pay over $60 monthly) is straightforward and easy to use for the masses. The erase feature, which is also available in an Apple version called Clean Up for iPhone users on the 15 Pro and 16 models, works like advertised. Put your finger over the offending object, as if you were using a real eraser, and erase it out of the there.

Unblur is more gimmicky. All it really does is add the “clarity” tool which are available in many editors, including Photoshop and Apple’s Photos app to make the photo seem a little less blurry.

For the birthday, Google announced two new features, which are available to users of the Pixel 9 phone now, and which it says will come to more Android phones soon, and Apple phones later this year.

• Reimagine lets you use AI prompts to have Google automatically change or add portions of a photo.

• Auto Frame. Adds a frame to the image.

Pricing: What was once free is available at multiple price points, but the average is $9.99 for 2 terabytes of storage monthly. (Yes, you can get 15 gigabytes of free storage, but most people who love photography will go through that in a few days.)

The pricing is confusing because the Google fee is shared with Gmail and Google Drive, thus, if you upload too many photos and exceed your limit, you won’t be able to read or respond to your e-mails. And beware the dreaded “back-up” tool that Google pushes hard. Click it, and you’ll probably be in trouble.

My tip: do not turn it on, unless you’re prepared to run out of room in your Google Photos and not be able to tame your e-mail. The backup tool sounds so great—every photo and video you take on your phone is backed up automatically. But ca-ching—your storage gets eaten up very quickly.

The next level pricing is $25 monthly for 5 TB of storage.

Amazon Photos offers the same auto backup service for free to members of its Prime service—but only for photos. If you have Prime, it’s a no-brainer not to be using it with Amazon Photos.

So, has the problem Lieb talked about been solved? Back then, we had photos on memory cards from our cameras, images snapped on phones and stuff we had all over our computers. So in a sense, Google did make it easier—the app works seamlessly with the desktop and mobile versions.

But—tagging needs work. People Search isn’t always effective. We still need to do a chore most of us don’t want to—add captions and tags to photos if we might want to find them later. (And a tag in Google Photos won’t show up in Apple Photos and vice versa.)

The best policy is not to have photos spread out amongst the different platforms, hard drives and computers, but everything in one place. That would make it easier to find them.

The problem for most of us is cost: that’s why they’re spread out. I don’t pay the monthly fee for Google Photos per se, but I do subscribe to Apple Photos. (But I actually do, with a Google One storage subscription.) I have multiple hard drives on my desk because I can’t afford to rent 60 terabytes of space monthly from Google or Apple.

I wish there was a better solution.

Readers, what are your biggest issues with storage, and what’s your go-to place for viewing photos and videos?

See the difference between a 3:4 and 16:9 photo. One is wider, the other is taller

Newsbytes

• Remember when Instagram only presented photos in the square format, before shifting to tall 9x16, which is different from the way most phone photos are presented on the device? Now Instagram said it will accept 3:4 aspect ratio “It’ll now appear just exactly as you shot it,” Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said. When you get new iPhones, it selects 3:4 as the format you will photograph in, while also giving you the additional option of square or 16x9, which is the same aspect ratio we use for video. I do my photos in 16:9 since I’m producing a TV show and want to have the same aspect ratio for the photos and video, but I welcome Instagram’s new flexability after all these years. I will say this—there was something really nostalgic about initially seeing all photos in square.

• I’ve been telling you for weeks that new iPhones in the fall will be more expensive. Don’t want to fork over $1,000 plus? Thankfully, Tech Radar has a good guide to four cheap Android alternatives under $500.

• The great director David Lynch left us a few months ago, and now, his beloved camera collection is up for auction. There are hundreds available.

• Before CGI was invented, the masters of the silent cinema did amazing camera tricks the old-fashioned, analog way. I just stumbled onto this great video that explains how they were done. Highly recommended viewing to see the masters—Chaplin, Lloyd and Keaton at work.

Sunday on Photowalks

We continue down the Mother Road for part 2 in our Route 66 series, and you’ll never guess where we’re going next? From St. Louis (the Gateway Arch, BBQ and that great frozen custard) to Joplin, MO, (the historic 66 Drive-In Movie Theater is nearby) and then right over the border for 13.2 miles of Kansas, where we had one of our favorite monents, at the Gearhead Curio Shop in Galena, Kansas. Wait `til you see the amazing bathroom!

You can see Photowalks on Scripps Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. ET, and in replays on YouTube.

And speaking of Route 66: we had the great Rhys Martin, a writer-photographer and major 66 enthusiast on our live show this week, talking about different ways to plan your motor west trip. If you missed it, here’s the replay.

Thanks as always for taking the time to watch, listen and read.

Jeff