Relive Photo Memories with Google Photos Free App

The Google Photos free app is by far the best app you’ll find for storing, searching, and showing your pictures. With free cloud back-up storage, it can’t be beat.

Last week we wrote about making the time to digitize the old photos you’ve taken or inherited, you know, the ones you keep in shoeboxes, packing boxes, photo albums, and in picture frames. 

You are sitting on a goldmine of precious memories.

 

Do you spend a good part of your life looking through your 5.8 inch (or smaller) phone display so you can get the perfect shot? 

Digital pictures are great because it doesn’t cost much money to take numerous pics, you’ll most likely never print then anyway. 

Perhaps you already have a lot of digital pictures, but never do much with them. 

If you’ve taken a lot of digital pictures over the years, you tend to take up a log of space on your hard drive.  I know, I have over 1 TB of pictures (that’s over 1,000 GB’s).  It’s a lot. 

Once you digitize your old photos, this is where the magic happens

…if you know what to do next.  

Digitizing is your pictures is the first important step.  The next step is setting up ways to see your pictures.  

Your Photos Are Digitized, Now What?

Great!  You are going to be so happy you took the time to digitize your photos!  We recommend two things.  We will spend most of our time on in this article on the second thing, the app. 

Here are two ways to enjoy your photos more…

1.  Digital Picture Frames

Go buy a digital picture frame.  They have come a LONG way and are fun and useful. 

Digital picture frames can now be automatically updated with your latest photos.  They are so fun to watch their slideshows.

In fact, you can create playlists (just as with music playlists) so you can show several playlists at once or one particular, at a certain time of year. 

On my picture frames, I like to show Christmas of the Past every Christmas, so our kids can see their reactions to Santa and of gifts when they were little.

I recommend you buy a second one of the same frame and give it to the grandparents.  They too will automatically receive updated pictures on their frame, ending the endless requests for you to print the pictures of the grandkids.

Setting up your digital picture frame will be easy, especially after you set up our #2 recommendation.

In the past, we’ve talked about some great digital picture frames that help keep my family’s memories alive. 

We have reviewed and loved the Nixplay Seed Wave 13 that plays video clips, the elegant Aura Frame, and the Lenovo Smart Display with Google Assistant.  These are all great choices.

In addition to these picture frames, you need a way to see your pictures that aren’t on your phone. 

The ones you took of the kids when they were little.  Your favorite vacation spot memories, your wedding pictures, pictures of your favorite pets and more. 

Most likely these pictures are on your computer.  Wouldn’t it be fun to see them in places other than your PC?

2.  Set Up your Google Photos Free App

If you aren’t already using the Google Photos free app, you must consider it.  It is absolutely my favorite app. 

As a picture enthusiast, it is the best way I’ve ever found to manage, organize, store, and view my pictures.

If you already use Gmail or another Gmail app, you already have the Google Photos free app.  It’s a part of their Google suite of apps. 

If you don’t have the app on your phone, download Google Photos (Android and iOS ) and open it while signed in to your Gmail account.

You can find Google Photos on your PC as well.  Go to photos.google.com, while signed into your Google account.  Using Google Photos is free and easy.

Google Photos Free App

Google Photos acts as a repository for all your photos.  It is a great app photo enthusiasts and every family member as it offers:

Automatic Back Ups of Your Phone’s Pictures

You can set up the Google Photos free app to automatically backup to the cloud any photos taken on your phone.

Best yet, storage in the Google Photos cloud is free, so no worries about running out of space. 

Photos will be compressed if your pictures and videos exceed 16 megapixels or 1080p resolution. 

Even if your picture is compressed to 16 MP, you can still print out a nice sized picture, up to 24×16, without losing resolution. 

But no worries, most phone cameras take pictures at 12 MP or lower.

The beauty now is that your photos are not only accessible from your phone, but also your PC, tablet, or any of your connected devices.

Label Your People

Google Photos gives you the option to name the people in your photos.  Under “Apps” in the menu, you’ll see an album called “People & Pets.” 

Clicking on this album shows you headshots of a bunch of familiar people and pets…as well as perhaps a bunch of unfamiliar ones.

Click on the headshot of someone familiar and add their name. 

Google has set up a face matching AI (Artificial Intelligence) mechanism that will scan through all your pictures and automatically add pictures that include that person’s face.  It’s truly amazing. 

The AI even recognizes the person as a child and groups them together with the latest pics.  Oh, and better yet, Google will face match all future pictures you take to each labeled person or pet as well.

The face matching is one of my favorite features.  It’s a great way to see various pictures of my kids through the years. 

Occasionally, Google Photos will ask your help in ensuring it has the right face for the right person.  It’s fun to go through these. 

Most of the time, Google has it right, although sometimes they name the wrong person.  This exercise gives you the opportunity to ensure Google labels your people correctly.

You will see a number of faces you do not recognize.  This is because Google assesses all the faces in a picture. 

If you took a picture of your child with their bandmates, classmates, or a concert crowd behind him, their faces will be evaluated as well.

I literally have tens of thousands of pictures of my kids and now I can find them so much easier!

When my father-in-law passed away last year, finding pictures of him for a slideshow was a snap.  It saved me tons of hours.

Make an Album for Every Occasion

Creating albums is easy by selecting the pictures you want to add to your custom album. 

You can select all pictures for a certain date or dates (and unselect those few you don’t want to add). 

Add pictures after searching for a theme, place, or person and add pictures to an album as well.

Some of the albums I created:

• Trip to Austin
• Birthdays
• GoGo Europe
• Christmases Past
• Our Puppies
• Childhood Memories (pics of my kids growing up)
• Generations Past (of grandparents and further generations back)
• Mothers Day 2019
• Remembering Joe (funerals)
• Beach Days
• 2007

Create and Share Albums with Others

It’s easy to share an album you create with a selected number of people.  The grandparents can see your trip pictures, as your trip happens.   

You can also share albums to collaborate with other family members or friends.

My family and I went to go see the Queen concert with Adam Lambert with our good friends last weekend.  We took a TON of pictures.

The next day, Google Photos had them all labled under that date and suggested I share the pictures with each of the people in the pictures, of whom I previously labeled. 

Clicking on one of our friends, I am given sharing options like through text, email, Google Photos, etc, dependent upon the contact info. I have for my friends and family. 

It makes sharing pictures from an event so easy.  I can then select or not select who to send the pics to.

My husband, son, and I automatically update our pictures together throught Google Photos so we have different perspectives from the trips we take and events we attend together.

Easy Slideshows

After creating an album you can click on the menu 3 vertical dots on the right side of the screen and select Slideshow to get a nice slideshow of your pictures.  Do this with any album. 

I have also sent these slideshows to my Chromecast device on my family room TV so we can all watch the pictures from our vacation together. 

Create Simple Photo Books

Google Photos makes it easy to create a Photo Book.  I clicked on my neice’s name and Google Photos showed me all of the photos I have of her since she was a little girl. 

For her 30th birthday, I created a Photo Book for her displaying some of my favorite pics of her and her family. 

I simply clicked on her headshot and name and got a ton of pictures.  Google will actually populate and format the book for you, finding the best pictures of the ones you have.  You can change them out, adjust them, or add to the book as you want.

The Google Photos book I chose was a soft covered book, totaling 62 pages.  Shipping was free and the book cost me $26.  It took under a week for her to receive it.

Creating a photo book doesn’t have to be difficult, but it sure can be fun as you go back through the years and reminisce. 

An easy gift for birthdays, grandparents, and your kids – like highlights of your favorite pictures of them as they are growing up.

Search Your Pictures

Search is another favorite feature of mine.  Google uses AI deep learning, which they call Inception, to create artificial neural networks to find similar information across many photos.  

As a result, Google Photos can handle very specific searches like bridges, ships, snow, rain, zebras, cake, etc.  The results are not perfect, but this technology is truly amazing.

You can search for “types” of photos on your Google Photos free app or your PC.  I searched for “cake.”

Here are some other things I often search for:

Halloween

New York

Disneyland

Screenshots

Family Members

Friends

Selfies

Videos

Your Child’s Elementary School

Mother’s Day

Baptism

Fireworks

Your Son or Daughter’s Birthday – will show your child anytime s/he is near a birthday cake

Award – shows anything that looks like someone is holding a trophy, a certificate, or anything close to these

Wedding

2007

Cakes

Assistant

Google Photos Assistant randomly makes Movies, Collages, Stylized Photos, and Animations out of pictures you have taken and saved to Google Photos. Create as many as you’d like.

You’ll also be surprised and delighted by an unexpected movie Google Photos makes for you, allowing you to relive the memories. 

This feature is available on the Google Photos free app and and on the PC.

The Assistant is another of my favorite features.  You can choose to have the Google Photos Assistant to make you a Movie for you based on themes.

Choose Movie Themes for:

• They Grow Up So Fast – highlights a selected child growing up through the years (you can do seperate ones for each of your children)
• Meow Movie – highlighting your favorite cat
• Doggie Movie – highlights your favorite pup!
• In Loving Memory – celebrates the life of your loved one or friend
• Selfie Movie – all those selfies you took were not in vain – now they’re a movie!
• A Year of Smiles – shows a bunch of fun pictures with lots of smiles
• Mother’s Day Movies – I make these for my mother-in-law and myself!
• Father’s Day Movies – a fun bonus for Father’s Day
• Valentine’s Day Movie – yes, a great one to show my husband each year
• Love Story – celebrates a romantic relationship

Every year, Google comes up with more theme movies like these.  Each movie lasts anywhere from 25 seconds to a minute, complete with theme music.  You can save them if you like them.

In addition, Google Photos will also occasionally serve up a Rediscover This Day collage which allows you to click and see all the pictures you took that day. 

I love these surprises, often fun times we’ve had with the kids.  A great pick-me-up.

If you aren’t using the Google Photos free app yet, you’re missing out.  It is definitely one of the most useful apps I have and has provided our family with endless entertainment.

Digitizing your old photos adds to the fun!  And it’s easier than ever to digitize them, find out How To Digitize Your Photos.