Photos are among people’s most cherished possessions and it’s easy to see why – they can capture memories with accuracy and emotion. Whether they’re pictures of friends and family, travel photos, or just everyday snaps, you’ll want to protect them as much as possible. Physical photos are easy enough to protect – keep them somewhere safe and dry – but digital photographs are as reliable as the technology on which they exist. The only way to be absolutely safe is to create multiple backups in different locations, but who has the time or money to do that? Google does; and it’s now doing it for free.
Google Photos is a free-to-use cloud storage service for photographs, and it’s available for iPhone, iPad, Android and the web.
If you’re running out of space on your smartphone, you can set your phone to delete photos from your device once they’re safely backed up online.
Once backed up on Google Photos, your photos are extremely easy to sort through, thanks to recognition software that can detect certain objects in your photos. This means you can search for ‘dog’ and see any of your photos that have dogs in them. It’s not perfect, but it’s decent enough for finding photos in a pinch. And you will have access to all of your photos on any device that can connect to the internet. To get started, go to Google Photos and set up an account, or download the app for iPhone, iPad or Android.
The fine print
Google will use compression software to save space when storing your photos and videos, so any photo uploaded that is over 16 megapixels (or video over 1080p) will be downscaled to fit within these limits. It is likely that you won’t be able to notice any difference on most of your photos, but you may like to keep originals of any that are particularly dear to you, or that you may want to have printed in the future.
