Internet users are not left out of services that automatically save photos and allow access to them on any device. There's Dropbox, OneDrive, Amazon Photos, and iCloud, for starters. But Google Photos has grown rapidly since its launch in 2015.

News about Google Photos lately hasn't been rosy, though. It once offered truly unlimited backup of all the photos (and videos) you took for… for free, although it degraded photos over 16 megapixels. This is no longer the case. Now every photo you upload, regardless of size, is deducted from the 15GB of free online storage allocated to you by Google and shared with Gmail, Google Drive, and other Google services.

Google Photos was born from reclaiming the best part of the Google+ social network that no one wanted to use: photo storage and sharing. Google Photos also replaced our former Editors' Choice for photo software, Picasale desktop program acquired by Google in 2004. You can still use the Picasa desktop software, but it will never be updated. It's time to part with it.

Maybe you're so mad at Google that you want to switch providers after being tricked, and we can't blame you. If so, there are many alternatives. But if you're with Google for the long haul, maybe even willing to pay that price… $1.99 per month for 100 Go Read on to find out how to get the most out of it. (Note: Content you downloaded before June 1, 2021 does not count against your 15GB).

1. Display a slideshow

Access any picture album and view it as a slideshow, which is especially nice when you pair your device with a credit card. Chromecast with Google TV on a large TV. On the web or in the Android app, tap the ellipsis menu in the top right. Select Slideshow and the album you are viewing will display the photos in order.

2. Play with research

Try searching Google Photos, using common and obscure terms. Google's automatic image tagging is pretty amazing, beyond simple face recognition (which helps identify people in photos even if they're in the background). For example, searching for the term "dog" got me just about every image I could imagine with my puppies in the photos, and even some with a simple puppy statue or paw. I haven't tagged any of these photos with “dog” or “statue”: Google knows it, that's all. Useful and scary! (He also shot photos of stuffed animals, a groundhog, and my brother in a Chewbacca costume, so usefulness is in the eye of the beholder).

Location searches are also easy thanks to geolocation, which makes it easy to find, for example, all your vacation photos at the same time.

3. Tag people and create a live album

If you're on the mobile app, tap Search (or on the web app, click Explore on the left), and at the top of the screen you'll see People & Pets. It features a row of portraits taken from your photos. Click on an untagged person and type their name. In the future, searching by name in Google Photos will make it easier to find (almost) all photos of that person, dog or cat. Google's face matching feature takes care of the rest. (You may need to enable this feature in the Android app).

Once you've tagged people and pets in Google Photos, you can use them to create a Live Album, which will automatically add certain people's photos to this album as they're uploaded or saved to Google Photos. They have a hefty limit of 20,000 images each. When you create a new album on mobile, tap Auto-add photos of people and pets, select the people or pets you want to include from the pop-up menu, tap Confirm, and you're done.

To help Google fine-tune its facial recognition, go to a Live Album, tap the person's name, and Google Photos may bring up a menu button that says Same Person or Different Person? to get you started on a face race that improves results.

4. Create a new live album from an old album

To turn an existing album into a Live album, open it, tap the ellipsis menu, and select Options. The auto-add photos option is here – click the + icon and add a person or animal that has already been named. New photos will be added to the album as you take them.

5. Share a library automatically

Sharing is a feature of almost everything you do with photos online, and Google Photos is no exception. Specifically, you can share your entire photo library with your partner.

On desktop, select Sharing in the left navigation and click Partner Sharing (on mobile, it's under your avatar > Google Photo Settings > Partner Sharing). Choose a person from your contacts who also uses Google Photos, then you can choose to share either All Photos or Photos of Specific People (made easy by built-in facial recognition). Select if you want to share only images from a specific date. Once the authorization is confirmed, this person will have access to all the images or to this single face when it is recognized.

This is a one-way sharing. If you want to see the same person in your partner's photos, they have to share it with you. Which is easy: when he accepts, have him click Share back in the top right.

6. Don't share your location

Images taken with almost all devices these days, especially smartphones, contain location data. Google Photos uses them to actively map where your photos were taken. This is a great feature for you, but when you share an image, you might not want the recipient to know exactly where the photo was taken. Disable this feature by going to Settings > Hide location data from photos (mobile) or Settings > Sharing > Hide photo location data (desktop). So when you create a link to share an image, the person viewing the image from that link does not receive any geographic data. (This does not work if you share through other means, such as social media).

7. Quick photo selection

On a mobile device, touch and hold a photo you want to select, then swipe your fingertip. All photos you touch will be selected. This makes it much easier to delete or move a group of photos all at once, or to use them with special tools like animations, films or collages.

8. Back up device storage

With the Backup & Sync feature, Google Photos automatically downloads and stores all the photos on your phone. And once an image is saved, the app can delete the local version from your phone or tablet to free up valuable space. Do this in iOS and Android via Settings > Manage device storage> Free up space. It'll ask you if you really want to delete all the photos Google Photos has backed up, as that means deleting them from your Android Gallery or iOS's Photos app (although they temporarily reside in the Recently Deleted folder).

9. Modify the Deep Blue

Basic photo editing on Google Photos is a snap: just click on an image, click the image icon, and zoom. Edit the icon, and you get filters to apply, sliders to adjust light and color (as well as a "Pop" slider to make the image pop), and a quick crop/rotate tool. They are simple tools that work on both mobile and desktop.

When adjusting light and color, you get a few extras by clicking the "Pop" slider. down arrow next to each slider. Under Light there is Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, and Vignette (to emphasize part of the image). Under Color is Saturation, Warmth, Hue, Skin Tone, and Deep Blue. This last setting allows you to adjust the blue color only, which is interesting when the shots include water. (For lush greens, increase Saturation, then decrease Skin Tone and Deep Blue).

When making edits on the desktop, click and hold the cursor over the image (or hold the letter "O" on your keyboard) to instantly see how the edits look compared to the original.

10. Apply the same edits to multiple photos

If you've perfected the edits on one image, apply them to a group of photos. On the desktop, when editing an image, go to the three-dot menu and select Copy changes. On the rest of the images, use the same menu to paste the changes. You can also use copy/paste keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, respectively). This option is not available on mobile apps.

11. Save a copy while editing

When you want to save an image after editing it, the app asks you if you want to save the changes and overwrite the original image stored on your device. If you don't want this to happen, tap the three-dot icon to revert to the original or copy. Save a copyYou will therefore have both versions. (The reverse is true if you edit a photo with any depth-of-field feature, such as with an iPhone X or later using the Portrait mode feature; in that case, it saves a copy by default).

In the web app version it says Done instead of Save, and won't ask you first if you want to overwrite the image, it just does. But you can access the menu again to save a copy. And you can still undo previous edits when using the desktop/web version, even if you edited in the mobile app.

12. Make a movie

Google Photos is obviously not just for photos, and neither are its editing tools. You can also do rudimentary editing on videos, but only on mobile devices. Open a video and tap the Edit icon button to access quick tools to trim the length, apply filters, export an image, crop it to a new resolution, and even rotate the video up to 45 degrees.

The most fun is placing several video clips together in a movie. Go to Search > Videos to find your clips, select the ones that would go well together, and from the Plus (+) list, select Movie. The application will "download clips" and display an interface with a small clip of each of your videos, accompanied by music chosen by Google's AI. Trim each clip to choose the best part. Click the music note to change the music Google chooses for you, choose from your own tracks, or remove it entirely.

13. Create collages, animations and more

Don't be afraid of calls from the Google Photos section. Utilities. These tools offer suggestions, such as making collages of similar photos, rotating images that look misdirected according to Google, even creating animations of images in a series or from videos. You can also create your own movie, collage or animation.

14. Collect items for 60 days

Have you deleted an image that you want to recover? Go to the left navigation on the desktop, or top buttons on the mobile app, and select Trash. Deleted images hang around here for a few months before completely disappearing. Unless you use the Empty Trash option. In this case, they are grilled.

15. Download All Google Photos

The editing tools on Google Photos are, indeed, quite weak compared to professional editing tools. If you need to import a photo or two from Google Photos into a desktop image editor, it's easy to download. For a single image, click the photo, then click Upload. The same goes for albums (select Download All), or downloading multiple selected thumbnails. If you do it this way, you can only get 500 at a time; Google Photos provides them as a ZIP file.

The best (and only) way to download all images from Google Photos is to use the following method Google Takeout, the service provided by Google to allow you to retrieve anything you have stored on a Google service.

16. Stock Footage Worth Keeping, But Not Viewing

Your smartphone camera isn't just for taking pictures of your friends and family. Use it for vaccine cards, restaurant menus, store opening hours signs, notebook pages, vehicle license plates that get you mad, and more. All this can be useful information later. Sure, it's not very pretty, and you might not want to see those images in your Google Photos feed. The service knows it: Go to the Utilities and select Move Photos to Archive. Be crazy. Just like with Gmail, an archived item is not deleted and you can find it later by searching. You can also click Archives on the left (on desktop) or under Library (on mobile). Unfortunately, Google Photos doesn't search the text of a photo. So you can't just type the words on a photo (like the name of a restaurant on a menu) to find it.

17. Live Photos Live

Apple's Live Photos – which add 1.5 second videos on either side of a photo – have been around since the iPhone 6s, and Google Photos supports these little mini-movies. Live Photos has a small toggle button at the top that lets you turn off the animation if you want. If you leave the animation on, it plays in a loop, with sound. If you edit a Live Photo in Google Photos, it's saved as a photo.

Sharing a Live Photo from an iPhone with someone who doesn't have an iPhone 6s or later usually causes the animation to be lost, and this is also the case if you share directly to from Google Photos (for example, if you try to send it via iMessage). However, Google Photos offers a workaround: use the menu on a Live Photo to upload the video. The video will save directly to Google Photos and even loop three times for you. Use Google Photos tools to crop or rotate it, then share it wherever you want. You can't save it as an animated GIF from Google Photos, but Google offers an alternative. free iOS app called Motion Stills to handle this.

18. Lock a Folder

Finally, there is a forget option for those of you who have photos on your phone that you don't want anyone else to see, but it's limited. First, you'll only find it on phones — you can't see (or create) this folder on a desktop computer, at all. Second, it currently only exists on Google Pixel phones, and will soon be available on other Android devices. The bottom line is that you create the folder and whatever you put in there won't show up in a grid or any album. The only way to see what's inside is to use your phone's security (whether that's a fingerprint, facial recognition, or passcode).

19. Print a book

Photobooks allow you to share photos with a Luddite friend or family member. Pricing is $9.99 for a 7-square-inch softcover or $19.99 for a 9-square-inch hardcover; each book has a minimum of 20 pages, but you can add additional pages for 35¢ in softcovers or 65¢ in hardcovers. A maximum of 100 photos per book is allowed, i.e. 100 pages. Shipping costs are not included. Here is our complete tutorial on how to create a Google Photos photo book.