Using Google Photos
How to use Google Photos to store, and
organise your photos and other images
in a way that makes it easy to look at
them, and to search for them. It can also
perform some basic editing tasks, and
with the newest phones apply a number
of ‘intelligent’ transformations.
Taking photos the old way,
with a bellows camera
Before digital photography, taking
photos needed light sensitive film
and a camera that could control how
much light the film was exposed to.
3 factors mattered:
● how long the shutter was open;
fractions of a second (or longer),
● the aperture width (as a fraction
of the focal length of the lens)
● how fast the film being used
responded to light:
Slow speed fine grain film ISO 25 for
best quality detail, or fast speed
grainy film ISO 800 to use in low
light.
Film roll clips
What is Google Photos?
Google photos is a way of storing photos and other images online and on
devices: phones, tablets, laptops, desktops - any device capable of connecting
to the internet.
In general, with effect from 2021, photos and images use up some of your
storage in Google Drive. The main exceptions are for pictures uploaded from
older android phones, which may not count towards your storage total at all
provided their pixel density is below a certain threshold, usually set at ‘below
professional quality’.
My pixel 5 phone ‘can back up unlimited
Photos and videos in Storage saver quality
at no charge.’ My previous phone could
store at even better quality (but the
camera was not as good!)
In printable terms these could produce a
10” by 6” picture of very good quality,
but not suitable for an advert hoarding.
Google photos is in an
app and a website
The app is available in the google play store:
It also shows Amazon photos here, inviting
installation, but google photos app is already
installed. (You can have both apps, but it
may get confusing…)
and Google photos is also online at
“photos.google.com”
Backing up photos from the google photos
phone app to the google photos cloud website
These are screenshots from my phone
as photos are backed up to the cloud…
Google photos online: grid view
photos on line show in a grid; here checking the one with blue outline…
Google photos online: full
view (of blue outlined image)
Hover at top right Tap the 3 lines
to show options for editing tabs
tap i for ‘info’
editing tabs
How to find photos & images in google photos
From standard gridview,
‘hover’ over the right hand
margin and a list of years
shows. Photos launched
in2011, but the dates go
back before then: eg 1967.
other ways to search
Date: (though often not the date listed) It helps to add some
Place name: ‘Birmingham Bull Ring’ details: names of people
(Google can tell locations from buildings) Search by album -
Objects: write your own search string: ‘a depending how you’ve
red car’, a ladder, ‘sitting on a bench’ named them
People you’ve already named: ‘Sue’ … Search for ‘instructions’,
Geographical features: waterfall, bridge or fireplace, or…
Type of event - wedding, street party
Searching by ‘ALBUMS’
Choose the album sort order
Various albums & numbers
of photos in them
Google suggests
it’s a picture of me
Albums (in fact it’s my
mother’s father).
help to
More search
You can add any
older google image to one or
images photos more albums.
Albums are like
tags. The same
image can be in
several albums.
This shows 2
photos from a
paper album
A picture taken in 1961 on my bellows camera
