Google untied Photos from Google+ and turned it into an unlimited storage of photos and videos

Google is gradually abandoning Google+, an ambitious social networking project that has never attracted wide users. But in order not to throw away with it some convenient features, the company provides them separately.

Now to the two main services located in the cloud, Drive and Gmail, another one has been added , Photos. The service is designed to store photos and videos uploaded by the user.
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The main distinguishing feature of the service was the promise of unlimited storage space for your photos and video files. The help system states that this storage option, called “High quality,” is suitable for photos taken with cameras up to 16 Mp and for video quality up to 1080p.

The “High quality” storage method in the help section is advertised as a way to “store photos and high-quality videos while reducing their size." With this method of storing, photos stored in a lossy quality compression (JPEG) format can be automatically compressed on a Google server with the “jpeg quality 92” setting. The company claims that this is done only in those cases where "it is possible to clamp without loss of quality."

Reduce the service will only be compressed photos in JPEG format. Compressed formats with no loss of quality, or no compression at all (PNG, BMP) remain in the original. It is difficult to say what is the savings with this method of work. By the way, to get unlimited space for storing any files does not work this way - when downloading, the service checks the file, and if this is not a photo or video, but, for example, a renamed archive, then it does not end up in the repository.

The second method, "Original", is proposed for those who do not want to lose as photos. They will not be clamped. However, in this case, Google will not provide unlimited space, and you will be offered all the same free 15 Gb, which can be upgraded to 100 Gb for $ 2 per month or up to 1 Tb for $ 10 / month. A limited place is shared between all three services - Photos, Drive and Gmail.

Thanks to the "cloudiness" of the service, access to it is possible from any device. The company tried and released client applications for phones based on Android, iPhone, iPad and desktop version for Windows. Programs provide the ability to automatically upload new photos to the cloud.

It would not be a service from Google if it did not provide additional features for searching through photos. After some time after loading the photos are automatically processed by the recognition system. When you go into the search for photos, they are divided into three parts - "people", "things" and "places".

In people, Google recognizes people's faces in photos and automatically groups them if it believes that the photo shows one person.

In the "places" are used geographic tags from photos, if they were in the files. Sometimes, in the absence of a tag, a service can recognize well-known architectural structures and assign photos of a “place” automatically.

In the "things" service tries to recognize everything that is in the photos, and groups them by the "found" on them things. Recognition errors can be corrected.

As in the version for Google+, the service can automatically create “Stories”, grouping photos and videos by time and geographic labels, and even adding automatic navigation paths on the map to them.

Downloaded photos can be laid out by album. By default they are in private access. You can share photos and stories with links.