Google announced on Tuesday via a blog post that its Photos service is finally getting an update. The new update brings in smarter photo albums and many other useful features.
The Smart Albums service will automatically generate photo albums for you based on the various parameters like the time of the shot, the landscape, potential landmarks, people in the picture etc. These shots will also, Google says, be the best ones. The service will also add maps to show how far you traveled and location pins to remember each place you visited.
The service will also allow you to add text captions to the album. This feature can be used to add notes, references or photo descriptions. You can even turn on collaboration to allow your friends to add their own photos. You can even create your own albums. Here’s what you can do according to the blog post:
You can add text captions to the album to describe the view from the small hill huge mountain you climbed, and turn on collaboration to let others add their own photos. Or if you want to create one yourself, any existing album can now be customized with maps, location pins, and text. Voilà: You have a beautiful album ready to share.
Shared albums first came to Google Photos 3 months ago. This allowed sharing and collaborating pictures easier than ever. Previously, you could share images and albums with others by sending links over SMS, email or messaging apps via Google Photos but with the new collaboration feature, you could allow people who you have shared the album with to not only view the album, but they could also opt to add their own pictures/videos to the collection.
The collaboration features in fact rival Moments, Facebook’s photo sharing and collaborating service. The service has already started rolling out for Android, iOS and the web.
Photos was previously and a part of the Google Plus app. Google, during last year’s I/O, launched the service as a standalone app with a few tweaks here and there.
