This week the folks at Google released a new version of their photos app, Google Photos. Android users will likely be first in the update line for a number of new features, including the most important one: free stuff support. Everyone loves free stuff, and Google knows how everyone loves free stuff, so they've added more free stuff to Google Photos.
It's a horror story for the modern world: you show someone an image on your phone, only for them to start browsing uninvited. You snatch your phone away, hoping they didn't stumble across one of the intimate photos that may be residing, fully exposed, on your handset. Artificial intelligence may be the solution to this problem, and it comes in the form of an app called Nude.
Today we found out that the Pixel 2 does not have the exact same "Unlimited Google Photos Uploads at Original Quality" deal that came with the first-generation Pixel. One year after launch, I remain positively shocked that Google's continued their Unlimited Google Photos Uploads at Original Quality deal with the original Google Pixel, to be entirely honest. I thought there's be some sort of catch - sort of like the catch that's included with the Pixel 2.
While people love taking photos with their smartphones, not everything we capture would probably fit in what many would consider “photographs”. Thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones, it has never been easier to capture anything and everything, which means you eventually accumulate cruft in your photo albums. Thankfully, Google Photos, with some intelligent help from Google Assistant, can now suggests which of your photos you may want to archive and which ones to keep on your phone for quick access.
Today we present the best look at Rey's Lightsaber we currently have available - up close and personal with a nice set of photos. These images come with a bit of confirmation of information passed down this week by the keeper of the canon for Star Wars: Pablo Hidalgo. Before there's any confusion when the first wave of The Last Jedi toys are released in stores - the name "Rey's Lightsaber" is a simple re-naming of a lightsaber we already know very well.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has once again made a massive batch of images public domain, marking its latest release since the 400,000 images it made available back in 2014. This time around, the Met has made more than 375,000 images available under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, doing so under the new Open Access policy. The images are all public domain artwork in the Met’s collection.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s weather satellite GOES-16 has sent back its first ever batch of photographs, and in them we get a high-resolution look at our own planet. The satellite took off from Cape Canaveral back in November, and has since been traveling around snapping photos from space of Earth. The GOES-16 takes photos at four times the resolution of previous GOES satellites.
They say a picture paints a thousand words, but who says you can’t have both pictures and words. Google, masters of text analysis etc., definitely isn’t saying so. In fact, it is adding text to moving pictures in the latest update to its still iOS-only and oxymoronic Motion Stills app. Now you can create not just animated GIFs but animated GIFs with animated text. And not just any text, mind you, but text that can follow moving objects around the picture.
An update to the Google Photos app collection has suddenly made Google the master at capturing long-lost memories in vintage photos. Google's newest app in this collection of photo-friendly apps is PhotoScan, an app that's set for action on both Android and iOS. This app allows users to "scan" their photos with their smartphone in a way which allows the device's processor to edit out curves, bends, glossy reflections, and other oddities.
Smartphones these days, even the lower spec ones, are capable of taking high resolution (though not always high quality) photos. That means those photos take up more space on the smartphone's storage. And when you have a measly 16 GB of internal memory, with no microSD card option, you will inevitably run out of space. That is precisely the point that Google is trying to make in a rare and admittedly amusing Google Photos video ad. And it is aiming its guns at, what else, the 16 GB iPhone.
Today the folks at Facebook responsible for photo syncing within their system have announced that Moments will be taking over. What on earth is Moments, you might wonder. Moments is an app which organizes and "privately shares" your photos from your smartphone. What if you don't want Moments, but want to keep your synced photos? There's only one option - save and exit. The desktop viewing segment of Facebook's photo sync is about to go away forever.
Original Quality Photos and Video uploads and backups to Google Photos may be the reason you want a Nexus smartphone in the near future. Google's latest APK for the app Google Photos has mention of a promotion which includes just that - a promo for Nexus smart devices specifically. "With Nexus, back up all you want," says the APK, "Unlimited free storage for original quality photos and videos uploaded from your Nexus device."