How to use Depth Editor and Color Pop in Google Photos

I used the Color Pop feature to make our
Geeks on Tour coffee mug stand out.

Have you ever wished you could make a photo of a flower, or a person, really stand out - with the main subject in color and the rest in black and white?

Now you can!

It's called Color Pop, and it is a new feature from our friends at Google Photos. It was announced along with Live Albums on Google's product blog on October 9, 2018. At the time it was only available on the Pixel phone, but it has arrived on the iPhone now as well. 

Take a "Portrait" photo

The key to using the Depth Editor and the Color Pop features is to have a photo that was taken with the Portrait option on the camera. Check out this past article about Portrait mode as well as Lens Blur mode on the Pixel.
In case you don't know how to take a portrait-style photo, here's a video:

Depth Editor and Color Pop

Once you have a Portrait style photo, when you use the Edit button in Google Photos, you will see some new options. Color Pop is one of the filters you will see right away. Depth Editor is accessible with the Adjustments button. Here's a video that shows you all about it.

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Chris Guld is President and Teacher-in-Chief at GeeksOnTour.com. She has been in computer training and support since 1983. She is now a Top Contributor for the Google Photos Forum, owner of the LearnGooglePhotos.com blog, and author of Mrs. Geek's Guide to Google Photos. 
She loves to teach! If you want to learn, you’ve come to the right place.

Are your cellphone photos backed up? Are you sure?

When you take some new photos, you will see them right away in the Google Photos app. That DOES NOT mean they’ve been backed up. Google Photos will show you photos in your camera roll on the device. At the top of your Google Photos library, you will see information about the progress of your backup.

It may say, “waiting for Wi-Fi to backup” – the default setting is to not allow Google Photos to backup using your cellular data. Your phone must be connected to Wi-Fi then. So, connect your phone to Wi-Fi, then open Google Photos again and look at the top to be sure that the backup is now in progress. Watch it and eventually you will see “Backup Complete”

I also recommend verifying that you know how to see the photos in your account by going to a computer and go to photos.google.com and log in with the same account – you will now see all the photos that are backed up.

Free Up Space: this is the command that – with one tap – will delete all the device copies of your photos after they are backed up to Google Photos. Mrs. Geek recommends not to use that command until after you have your photos copied to one more location. You want to make sure that you have at least 2 copies of your photos!

Tutorial Video - watch the first 8 minutes

In episode 154 of our What Does This Button Do? show, we teach about cell boosters, but we begin the show with a Google Photos tip where we demonstrate everything in this article.

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Chris Guld is President and Teacher-in-Chief at GeeksOnTour.com. She has been in computer training and support since 1983. She is now a Product Expert for the Google Photos Forum, owner of the LearnGooglePhotos.com blog, and author of Mrs. Geek's Guide to Google Photos. 
She loves to teach! If you want to learn, you’ve come to the right place.

Google Photos: How to view your photos in order by date-uploaded rather than date-taken

On a computer, you can see the timeline of your
photos by moving your mouse to the right sidebar.
These dates represent the date the photo was taken.

When you use Google Photos to store your pictures, they are organized in one great big stream, by date the photo was taken. The most recent photo is on the top, as you scroll down you're going back in time. On a mobile device you can pinch the screen until you see your photos grouped by year and month.

Old Photos get lost

A friend of mine just uploaded a group of old photos from her computer to Google Photos.  When she opened Google Photos, she expected to see those photos at the top. When they weren't there, she assumed she had done something wrong and not uploaded them correctly. She tried it again - still no photos. 

What she didn't realize is that these old photos got organized into her "stream" according to the date they were taken. She had no idea what dates these photos were taken, so she had no way to find them!

How to change the order to "Date Uploaded"

Google Photos does not give us many tools to re-order photos. Albums are generally our only tool for customizing how photos are grouped. But, there is a way to just view your library in order of Date-Uploaded rather than Date-taken.

1. On a computer/browser view your photos
2. Click in the search bar at top, don't type anything to search for
3. Scroll down to the section that includes Videos, Selfies, Screenshots - click "Show More"
   
4. Now you should see an option for "Recently Added" - click that
5. You should now be viewing your library of photos with the most recently added at the top, scroll down and you still go back in time, but by date added now rather than date taken

What about Mobile apps?

[Jan 2020 update] you can now enter "Recently Added" in the search bar to see your library in date added order.
On mobile apps this option does not show up. I have no idea why. The search bar is there, when you click on it you see Videos, Selfies, Screenshots and "Show More," but when you click Show More you will not see Recently Added!?!?! 

Where there's a will, there's a way! On your mobile device, instead of using the Google Photos app, open a browser and go to Photos.Google.com - just like you would on a computer. Now you will be seeing the same thing you do on a computer - including the Show More with Recently Added.

A shortcut

URL:  https://photos.google.com/search/_tra_

On a browser, after you've clicked the Recently Added option, take a look at your address bar - you will see the specific URL that has been used. You can enter that URL yourself (or save a bookmark) 

Mrs. Geek's Guide to Google Photos

 If you have the book, this feature is covered in Chapter 5: Explore and Organize. The section is called "View by Date Uploaded."

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Chris Guld is President and Teacher-in-Chief at GeeksOnTour.com. She has been in computer training and support since 1983. She is now a Top Contributor for the Google Photos Forum, owner of the LearnGooglePhotos.com blog, and author of Mrs. Geek's Guide to Google Photos. 
She loves to teach! If you want to learn, you’ve come to the right place.

Using Google Photos to Edit Video

If you know how easy it is to trim off the beginning and end of videos, you will take more videos and share them with friends! Google Photos has this trim capability built right in to the mobile app, on your iPhone, iPad or Android mobile device-not on the computer. So, go ahead and take that video on your phone - view it and trim the junk from the beginning and end. You're done.

Preparing to take a video often means some messiness in the beginning. It's easy to get rid of that!

This can be done right in Google Photos app. You don't need any of the movie maker tools

1. View your video
2. Tap edit button
3. Drag white markers to desired beginning and end
4. Save

This will save a copy with the same date as the original, we recommend you share to YouTube

And, there's more ... you can rotate and stabilize video too. You can crop out content in the middle of your video by using the simple movie maker tools in Google Photos. Using those Google Photos movie maker tools, you can also combine several video clips and still photos into one movie, complete with music. When you're done, just tap the share button and choose YouTube. We recommend sharing to YouTube because it provides the best viewing experience. You can choose to make the YouTube video public, or just share with friends.

We will be demonstrating these video editing features in Episode 150 of What Does This Button Do?

LIVE today, Sunday 8/12/18 2pm Mountain Time (4pm Eastern, 3 Central, 1 Pacific)

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Chris Guld is President and Teacher-in-Chief at GeeksOnTour.com. She has been in computer training and support since 1983. She is now a Top Contributor for the Google Photos Forum, owner of the LearnGooglePhotos.com blog, and author of Mrs. Geek's Guide to Google Photos. 
She loves to teach! If you want to learn, you’ve come to the right place.

How to use Google Photos Editing Tools: Crop

Do you think you can't get a good picture of that bald eagle with your smartphone? Take it anyway! You may be surprised at how good you can make it look with just a couple of tweaks from Google Photos editing tools.

Zooming with the camera

I used to teach people to NOT use the zoom feature on smartphone cameras. It's just a digital zoom which is the same as cropping after taking the picture. However, smartphone cameras have improved over the years, even simple digital zoom works better, and many of the newer smartphones have a second lens which is a true optical zoom. If you have a phone with 2 rear lenses, like my iPhone 7 Plus, you can tap the 1x icon on your camera screen (it changes to 2x)  to take advantage of the optical zoom capabilities of your phone. Even if you don't have the zoom lens, you can use 2 fingers on the screen to zoom, but don't go too far with this technique because it's hard to hold the camera still. You can accomplish the same thing (digital zoom) after taking the shot by cropping the photo with Google's editing tools.

Using Google Photos Crop tool

To use the crop tool:

1. Open the photo and tap/click the Edit button 
   
2. Now you will see all the editing tools, tap/click the crop tool 
   
3. You should now see white markers at each corner, you can drag them in closer to the eagle.
   
4. Tap/Click Done, then Save. You might want to try an Auto filter before saving to see if it improves the exposure and color of the photo.

Now, I admit that this picture isn't going to win any awards. Don't try printing it because it is way too low resolution after cropping it down to a fraction of the original photo. But, I love having this eagle photo to show people using my phone. I'm glad I took the shot.

Reasons to use the Crop Tool

Most every photo can be improved with a simple crop. It can cut out extraneous items in the photo and get closer to your subject. It can also change the aspect ratio of the photo. Aspect ratio means the ratio of the height to the width, from 4X6 to square, for example. If you have specific needs for the aspect ratio, you can click/tap on the crop-ratio button. It will give you the choices of: Free, Original, Square, 16:9, 4:3, or 3:2

Here are some examples of what cropping can accomplish:

The crop tool can also straighten a crooked photo by dragging the 0 point.
If you are a GeeksOnTour.com member, be sure to go thru the Learning Guide for editing with Google Photos and Snapseed. Also, here are some tutorial videos on editing

• 458.GP-Photo editing in SnapSeed
• 457.GP-Editing on Mobile
• 456.GP-Edit Pictures on Computer
• 491.GP-Photo edit BlackWhite
• 489.GP-Photo Editing

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Chris Guld is President and Teacher-in-Chief at GeeksOnTour.com. She has been in computer training and support since 1983. She is now a Top Contributor for the Google Photos Forum, owner of the LearnGooglePhotos.com blog, and author of Mrs. Geek's Guide to Google Photos. 
She loves to teach! If you want to learn, you’ve come to the right place.

If you can scan a code, you can get our Google Photos eBook FREE

Mrs. Geek's Guide to Google Photos - 2nd Edition

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• 25 more pages, complete index (see table of contents below)
• All instructions up to date
• Covers new features like Shared Libraries, Google Lens, Favorites and more
• Updated videos
• eBook available NOW for anyone who can scan this code

Print version will be on Amazon by Aug 1

Did you know that Google Photos can scan QR codes if you take a picture of the code, then use the Google Lens button?
If you don't know how to scan that code, watch Episode 146 of What Does This Button Do? We demonstrate the Google Lens method and much more in this 45 minute show.

Chris Guld is President and Teacher-in-Chief at GeeksOnTour.com. She has been in computer training and support since 1983. She is now a Top Contributor for the Google Photos Forum, owner of the LearnGooglePhotos.com blog, and author of Mrs. Geek's Guide to Google Photos. 
She loves to teach! If you want to learn, you’ve come to the right place.

Google Photos - Your questions answered

We got your questions! Lots of them! We'll answer them live as we record Episode #145 of What Does This Button Do?"

• Sunday June 17, 2018
• 2pm Eastern time
• Geeks on Tour YouTube channel - Subscribe and click the Bell icon to be notified when we're live

We answer a lot of questions about Google Photos everywhere we go. This week, we solicited questions for our YouTube show, "What Does This Button Do?"

We got a lot of responses!

How do you get photos taken on Samsung Galaxy 8 from gallery to Google Photos automatically (ie. without having to select them/ tap share/ tap upload to G.P.) ?
LOVE your show.. I've learned a lot from listening to you...
Ed and Deanna

I have google photos and when I open up the app I see my photos, yea. If I “free up space” it gives me the message “delete 399 items...” Sure I want free up some space. But where can I recall these photos one month or one year down the road? Until I am certain I can get my photos back, I’m not throwing anything away!  Ken

 How do I get Google photos on my computer & then print them. Thanks, Eleanor

All my pictures are organized in folders and sub folders.  How is this handled in Google Photos?

Question re: taking a selfie using OK Google mentioned in one of your previous shows.I have a Moto G phone with the OK Google app.  If I start with OK Google and ask it to take a selfie, the camera goes on, however, it won't reverse from a regular photo to selfie mode.  Any suggestions?

So I’m using Snapseed to add text to my photos on Google.  If I take pics with iPhone is there a quicker way to add text and that picture will be picked up by Google.    Adding text works but makes me miss PicasaThanks Phyllis

 I'm a long time Google user so I have a great deal on 94 Gb of their online storage. But, alas, it is now full of photos and videos that I have plenty of space to upload to other cloud providers with greater capacity at a more favorable price. My question is twofold: how can I quickly, easily, and painlessly delete those Google stored photos; and how can I prevent that drive from filing up again? Rainer

Can you put Google Albums in alphabetical or date added order. I’m always scrolling through the list. Tim

I have at least 1000 photos taken with 5 different cameras over the last 20 years. All are jpg format, and all are on a single Windows drive, (yes, I do have backups).  I need to eliminate duplicates, group by events, vacations, family (plenty of overlap) etc.  I fear that if I upload to Photos (I can accept the reduction in resolution) things will get hopelessly scrambled. Please suggest a plan of attack. Jack 

Those are just some of the questions we will answer. If you tune in while we're live, you can also ask questions in the chat.  

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Chris Guld is President and Teacher-in-Chief at GeeksOnTour.com. She has been in computer training and support since 1983. She is now a Top Contributor for the Google Photos Forum, owner of the LearnGooglePhotos.com blog, and author of Mrs. Geek's Guide to Google Photos. 
She loves to teach! If you want to learn, you’ve come to the right place.

Google Photos "Free Up Space" command is scary

An opening screen of Google Photos encourages users to
remove photos from their device

The moral of the following story is this: Make a separate backup of your photos, either to your computer, or to another cloud storage like OneDrive or Dropbox BEFORE using the Free Up Space command on Google Photos.

Why? Because you want a true backup of your photos. Let's step thru the count:

1. You take a photo with your phone, at this point you have one copy of that photo
2. Google Photos copies that photo online to your Google account, now you have two copies of that photo, the original on the phone and a backup in the cloud.
3. Free Up Space removes the original photo from the phone, now you have only one copy of that photo.

One copy does not a backup make!

Here's the story

One of the reasons that people start using Google Photos is the advertised capability to remove the photos from your phone after they've been "backed up" to Google Photos. I teach a lot of newbies how to use Google Photos and the conversation goes something like this:

User: I've installed Google Photos, so now I can delete my pictures from Gallery, right?Me: No, do not delete using the native Gallery or Photos app. You need to use the Google Photos command for removing photos User: What command is that?Me: In the Google Photos app, tap the 3-line menu, then Free Up Space. The Free Up Space command will delete them all in one tap, AND it will only delete photos from the phone that have been successfully uploaded to your Google Photos account.

So far, so good. My main goal is to teach them the proper command. I don't want them using the trash can (which deletes both the device copy and the cloud copy) or using the native app to delete photos (which will delete photos that haven't been uploaded to Google Photos yet.)

The second part of the conversation goes like this:

User: Ok, I tapped the Free Up Space command and now I get a message that 1,367 of my photos will be deleted and this cannot be undone. I'm scared.Me: Good! That tells me that your photos are precious to you. Let's be double-sure they're safe before you delete the originals from the phone. If you do these two things first, you can Free Up Space without fear ...

1. View your photos on a computer. If you can open a browser on a computer, go to Photos.Google.com and log in with your Google Account username and password, you should see all your photos. This will give you the confidence that they have, indeed, been copied from your phone to your Google account, AND, that you know the username and password for that account!
2.  If you have another cloud storage account with sufficient space, such as Dropbox, OneDrive, or Amazon Prime Photos - they all have the ability to automatically upload photos from your phone, similar to Google Photos. I use OneDrive. I have a Terabyte of storage there because I pay $69/year for Office 365. There is a OneDrive app for my iPhone with a setting to upload all photos. Only after I see that is complete, do I use the Free Up Space on Google Photos.
   
   If you don't have another cloud storage service, you can connect your phone to your computer, or an OTG Flash drive to copy all photos to that storage. You can also connect your phone wirelessly to any hard drive, using a travel router like the one we demonstrate here.
   
   Note: Apple's iCloud Photo Library is yet another cloud backup solution, but if you use that, you cannot use the Free Up Space command because iCloud will sync the deletions across all your Apple devices when they are removed from device.

Love your photos? Back them up!

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Chris Guld is President and Teacher-in-Chief at GeeksOnTour.com. She has been in computer training and support since 1983. She is now a Top Contributor for the Google Photos Forum, owner of the LearnGooglePhotos.com blog, and author of Mrs. Geek's Guide to Google Photos. 
She loves to teach! If you want to learn, you’ve come to the right place.

Bad News about Picasa ... but we were warned

How do you upload photos from your computer to Google Photos? 

If you're still using Picasa to do this, you're in for a rude awakening next time you try to click that green button - or any option for "Upload." 

If you don't use any upload or sync options with Picasa, then you have nothing to worry about. The Picasa software on your computer still works for managing your folders of photos on your computer, for editing them, and for making collages. You'll just need to use other methods to upload them to your Google Photos account online.

We were warned

The official announcement is in the Google blog here. 

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, it's been predicted ever since Google retired the Picasa program. The problem is that we've been lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that the upload from Picasa has continued to work as long as it has. Just last week, I used Picasa to upload pictures from my computer to Google Photos, now "all of a sudden" it doesn't work. 

If you want to know how to upload photos to Google Photos from your computer, that was the subject of Episode 138 of What does this button do?

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Chris Guld is President and Teacher-in-Chief at GeeksOnTour.com. She has been in computer training and support since 1983. She is now a Top Contributor for the Google Photos Forum, owner of the LearnGooglePhotos.com blog, and author of Mrs. Geek's Guide to Google Photos. 
She loves to teach! If you want to learn, you’ve come to the right place.

Google Photos: Everything you need to know

I wrote a book about Google Photos. It's titled Mrs. Geek's Guide to Google Photos. The subtitle is "Your lifetime of photos, effortless and free." I keep thinking, if Google Photos is so effortless, why do I need a 100+ page book to teach how to use it?
I've come up with these 14 points as all you really need to know. The links to videos are for GeeksOnTour.com premium members. Please leave a comment if you think I left something out, or got something wrong. If you take a lot of photos and wish that they were all together and safe so you never had to worry about them - Google Photos is truly the best option.
Member Tutorial Videos:
497.GP-Install on iOS
496.GP-Install on Android
490.GP-Backup Complete
500.GP-Install Backup and Sync for Windows
476.GP-Manual upload from smartphone
475.GP-How to upload photos from an external hard drive
474.GP-Manual Upload from Mac Photos

1. You need a Google account to use Google Photos. Make sure you know your username and password.
2. To use Google Photos on a mobile device, download the free app from the App Store (iOS) or Play Store (android)
3. Once the app is installed, open it and accept the default settings: 1. Your google account 2. High Quality file size 3. Only upload when on Wi-Fi
4. You will immediately see the photos on your device. If your device is connected to Wi-Fi, it will start uploading (copying) all those photos to your account in the cloud.
5. Your photos are not “in Google Photos” until the backup is complete. You must open the app to view the progress and watch for the message “Backup Complete”
6. Once you see “Backup Complete” you can remove photos from your device and still see the Google Photos copy. But, DO NOT use the trash can for this, that erases the photo from everywhere – device AND cloud.
7. Android note: your device may have photos in “Device Folders” other than the camera. They will not be included in Google Photos until you: menu, device folders, select the folder and turn on Back up & Sync.
8. iOS note: if iCloud Photo Library setting is on, leave it on until Google Photos backup is complete. Do not delete photos or FREE UP Space using Google Photos while iCloud Photo Library is on because it will also delete them from iCloud.
9. Optional: I recommend a second cloud backup service like One Drive, Dropbox, or Amazon before removing photos from your device. That’s a true backup.
10. To remove all photos from your device and leave them in Google Photos – use the 3-line menu and FREE UP SPACE (iOS: Do not delete photos or FREE UP Space using Google Photos while iCloud Photo Library is on because it will also delete them from iCloud.)
11. To use Google Photos on a computer there is no software to install, just go to the website, Photos.Google.com and sign in with your Google account.
12. To upload pictures from your computer to Google Photos manually, you have 2 choices: 1. Drag and drop from computer folders to Google Photos website 2. From Google Photos website, use the Upload button.
13. To upload pictures from your computer to Google Photos automatically, install the Backup and Sync app and set preferences to specify what photos you want uploaded and how you want them synced.
14. All photos uploaded to Google Photos, from whatever device, will be included in the “Library.” The photo library is one giant stream of photos in order by date taken. There are NO folders.

The 14 points above are everything you need to know to successfully store your lifetime of photos for free, forever. Once they’re there, there is so much you can do with them!

• Explore: Google automatically groups your photos by People, Places, and Things. It is so much fun to explore and find photos you’ve forgotten. You can also use Search, and find photos without the need to tag them first.
• Edit: Google Photos has built in editing tools that can, so easily, make your pictures look better. It also works together with the Snapseed app for hundreds more, professional, editing tools.
• Creations: it’s easy to make your own Albums, Collages, Animations, Movies, and even printed Books.
• Sharing: your library of photos is private, for your eyes only, but Google Photos makes it easy to share the ones you want.

Here is one of our "What does this button do?" live YouTube shows: What's New with Google Photos

Please leave a comment if you use Google Photos and learned something in this article.

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Chris Guld is President and Teacher-in-Chief at GeeksOnTour.com. She has been in computer training and support since 1983 and owned a Computer Training Center called Computer Savvy from 1983-1996. She was one of the first WordPerfect Certified trainers in 1986; President of the International Computer Training Association in 1993; Author of the Beginner’s Guide to Picasa and the PicasaGeeks.com website. She is now a Top Contributor for the Google Photos Forum, author of Mrs. Geeks Guide to Google Photos, and owner of the LearnGooglePhotos.com blog. She loves to teach! If you want to learn, you’ve come to the right place.