Google has announced a few notable updates to its Photos app, with some new features powered by its machine-learning technology.
The app can now automatically generate animated GIFs from videos you upload to the service. Google says its technology looks for video segments that capture activity – "a jump into the pool, or even just an adorable smile" – and creates short animations that can then be easily shared over email or social media.
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In addition, Photos now uses facial recognition to surface older pictures of people that appear in your most recent uploads, and can also serve up what it considers to be picture 'highlights' from each month – similar to Apple's Memories feature in its native Photos app.
Last but not least, Google Photos now detects sideways photos in your uploads and offers to rotate them in one batch, saving you from having to correct their orientation yourself one by one.
Google Photos is a free download for iPhone and iPad from the App Store. [Direct Link]
Top Rated Comments
It's one of Google's Top 10 best products they've ever released.
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Search 800 photos in Apple's Photos app for "dog": 4 results, all dogs.
Search same 800 phones in Google Photo for "dog": 38 results, all dogs.
This app keeps getting better and better, their face and object recognition algorithm is so good it's almost scary...
I recently had the experience of having my 15 year old meet up with friends he had not seen in 7 years. Google identified all three kids as being the same people as when they were kids. Scary indeed!B
Though I have 2 feature suggestions that would make the app a lot better... The first is a duplicate finder. The second feature is "smart albums" that allows you to add filters, for example an album that automatically detects all photos taken at a certain place, or an album that detects all photos that includes Person X and person Y together.
Apple has a lot of things to learn from Google Photos...
My hope is that we'll drift back to the good old days when Apple was supplying the hardware and system software, and Google was providing the services. If Apple continues to open up to third party integrations, this could actually happen.
Always thought this will naturally occur, but now Google appear to finally be taking phones seriously, so they may wish to start (slowly) eroding Apple.---
Search 800 photos in Apple's Photos app for "dog": 4 results, all dogs.
Search same 800 phones in Google Photo for "dog": 38 results, all dogs.
Google is really amazing at the actually coding aspect of software. Innovation is pretty good as well (creativity in new features, etc.) but their delivery of products is very lackluster. Apple is much better at delivering products and services; providing a much more complete package (ecosystem, all features working hand in hand, etc.).
The problem with Google is they release some amazing products/services, then some other really good ones which suddenly die after 18 months, or get incorporated into something else entirely.In this manner, I think google is a much smarter company, and appreciate their work very much.
That's why Google Photos is a surprising hit on every level. It's as revolutionary as Gmail was. But something like this awesome new app Google Trips? I'm not going to get too attached to it!!