Google Photos Makes Mothers' Day Videos from Your PIctures

Google wants us to have more fun with our photos. That's why they give us a place to be the forever home for ALL your pictures. With Mother's Day coming up, they've given us a new toy! A Mother's Day movie made for you. All you have to do is:

1. Go to Photos.Google.com/mothersday on any connected device - phone, tablet, or computer. 
2. Click the button "Get Started"
3. Select a Mother. You should be seeing all of the People in your Google Photos library, if not, see prerequisites below. Find the face of your mother and click it. Then click Next.
4. Select Children. Click the face(s) of you and your siblings. Click Done.
5. That's it! You'll see a message "Creating Movie: This will take a few minutes. When it's ready, it will show up in your Photos Assistant." If you like it, click Save.

Google Photos finds pictures with both you and your mom in the same picture, then strings them together along with music. Here's what it did for me:

Prerequisites 

In order for this to work you must be using Google Photos, be logged into your Google account, and have lots of pictures there. You must also have Face Groupings turned on. To check that, go to Google Photos and click the 3-line menu, then Settings. You should see an option for "Group Similar Faces" - make sure that is on. Once you turn it on, it can take a while to group the faces, be patient. If you don't see the option for grouping faces, you may be in a country where it is not supported.

Want More?

You can make additional Mother's Day movies by repeating the steps above. It doesn't have to be your mother. You can pick another mother (or even a father, or a teacher) as long as you have pictures of her and her kids in your photo library. You can even skip the 'Select a mother" part altogether and just use this to make movies of small groups of people. Select a Mother: click Skip. Select Children: select a few people who you expect to all be in some pictures together.

Want to Make Changes?

Google does all the work to create this movie, but if you want to change something, you can edit it just like a movie you created yourself. You can remove photos, you can add other photos, you can add video clips, you can rearrange them, and change the music. You need to be using Google Photos on a supported mobile device, then you open the movie and tap the pencil to edit it. What you see next will depend on whether you are using Android or iOS, but both of them allow you to make the changes mentioned above.

How to Give it to your Mother

The movie that is created is now a part of your Google Photos library. I like to upload mine to Youtube so it can be embedded on a web page - as I did above. You can also share it via email, Facebook, or other social media, but if you want something more solid, how about a digital photo frame? Most photo frames can display photos and videos from a USB 'thumb' drive. To get your movie to the thumb drive, plug it into a computer, then open the movie in Google photos, click the 3-dot menu and choose Download. Navigate to the drive letter for the thumb drive and Save.

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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.

Take Videos and Google Photos can make Movies

Do you ever use your smartphone to take videos?  ... on purpose? :-)

You should! These smartphone cameras are excellent video cameras. Just take 20 seconds of video occasionally and you’ll be glad you did. Then you can put together cool little movies with just a couple clicks using Google Photos. Your screen will look different during the movie making process in Android vs. iOS, but the steps below are the same:

1. Select the photos and video clips you want included in your movie (up to 50)
2. Click the + in the upper right and choose Movie
3. Google Photos will automatically add music 
4. That's it! If you see a Save button, tap that.

Here's one I just made of our travels from the west coast of California to Tennessee.

If you are a Geeks on Tour member, we have tutorial videos on this.

• 567.GP-Vacation Movie with Google Photos

Movie Maker is not available on the Web version, just on mobile devices. See the list of supported devices here.

If you have Mrs. Geek's Guide to Google Photos, you will see movies covered in Chapter 10: Creations

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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.

Top 7 Reasons to Love Google Photos

#7: It makes fun creations from your photos and videos. 

Sometimes it does it automatically without you even asking. Sometimes you want to make some yourself. This fireworks example is an animation. The movies even add music!

#6: It's so easy to share a picture, or lots of pictures. 

All you do is select the picture(s) tap the share button, and select the person(s) from your contacts. If you choose their email address, they will receive the photo in an email. If you choose their phone number, they will receive the text, if they use Google Photos, you can skip email or phone and send it directly to their Google Photos account. It will show up in their Google Photo's Assistant.

#5: You can edit your photos on the phone/tablet, or on the computer. 

Just one tap on "Auto" can make a world of difference. Want your picture to have more pizazz? Try the Pop button! You can straighten a crooked horizon by tapping the Crop/Rotate tool and drag a slider to change the angle of the photo. Any edits you make will synchronize to all your devices.

#4: You can make albums to show off your best photos. 

Just select the photos you want to include, tap the 3-dot menu and Add to Album. Once an album is made, you can edit it to re-organize the photos, add maps, and even add text blocks to fully tell your story.

#3: Auto Backup and Free Up Space

Cellphone photos will automatically backup to "the cloud" - your Google Account online. Once you verify they made the trip, you can remove them from the phone with one command - Free Up Space.

#2: Find the Photos you Want with Sort, Search and Automatic Albums

Google PHotos keeps your entire library of photos (over 50,000 for me) in order by date. A simple pinch on the screen and you see years and months grouped together. Looking for a particular picture? Try search. I can come up with that one photo of kayaking in La Jolla by searching for "Kayaking in La Jolla" !! There are also automatic groupings by Faces, Places, and Things. 

#1: Google Photos is a Forever Home for your Lifetime of Photos

The number one, best reason to use Google Photos is that it can collect your photos from many sources and store them in one place - your Google Account online - with unlimited storage, for free, forever! By uploading from my mobile devices, uploading from my computer and all external hard drives, I have a master collection of over 50,000 pictures. I can see all of them from any device I happen to have available. 

Just a sampling of my 56,000+ photos as seen with Google Photos on my phone.

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Chris Guld (aka Mrs. Geek) is President and Teacher-in-Chief t 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 and owner of the LearnGooglePhotos.com blog. She loves to teach! If you want to learn, you’ve come to the right place.

Google Photos Animations of Fireworks Photos

We hope you enjoyed the July 4 holiday as much as we did. But, that would be hard to do! July 4 is also our wedding anniversary - we call it inTERdependance day!

We took a water taxi ride to watch the fireworks in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It was a beautiful evening and I snapped lots of photos with my iPhone. Here is a sample of the many photos I took:

Later, when I looked in my Google Photos app, I noticed the little red marker on the Assistant that indicates something new is waiting for me. I opened it up, and here was an auto-created animation that Google Photos put together from my fireworks photos. It is amazing that this is all done for me. It is even more amazing how good it is! Notice the buildings in the photo - they don't move at all throughout the animation. I stood in the same spot to take the photos, but they were all handheld with my phone - I'm sure that I moved somewhat between shots.

To create the animation yourself, you just 

1. select the photos you want in the animation
2. Click (or tap) the + button
3. Choose Animation

That's it!

Animations don't have to be action shots. You can also use them for slideshows. I used animation to create this quick slide show of an entire month of photos.

If you are a Geeks on Tour member, you can watch these tutorial videos. If you're not a member, Join Now!

• 439.Google Photos Creating Animations
• 435.Google Photos Selecting on Computer
• 438. Google Photos – animation to replace slideshows
• 436.Google Photos – Send Pictures to a Friend
• 435.Google Photos Selecting on Computer
• 434.Google Photos and Watermarks
• 432.Google Photos – Manual Upload from Windows
• 429. Google Photos – Deleting Pictures using Web
• 428. Google Photos – Deleting Pictures from iOS (iPhone/iPad)
• 427. Google Photos – Deleting Pictures from Android

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Google Photos: All Play and No Work!

I went for a walk with my Mom the other afternoon. We have this favorite little park, and it was a gorgeous day. She’s walking pretty slow these days, so I had ample opportunity to take my phone out of my pocket and snap pictures. I showed her each picture I took and she would point out something else worthy of a shot.

Editing Pictures as you Take Them is FUN

I was excited to catch the duck in flight just as it came in for a landing. Then I looked at the photo on my phone and realized that you couldn’t even see the duck! It needed to be cropped. No problem, with no tools other than my finger and the phone, I tap on the little pencil that brings up Google Photos editing tools, tap the crop tool and drag a corner in closer to the duck while still leaving some of the lily pads in the shot. I tap the checkmark to signal that I’m done with cropping, Then, one tap on the Auto adjustment gives me a better look.

The second picture below just has an auto adjustment applied, and the third has a crop and auto adjustment.

Yes you can make a collage on your phone

I took a few more pictures, including a selfie of Mom and me that needed no improvement at all! It was such a nice day I wanted to share it with my friends on Facebook, but I didn’t want to post multiple pictures, so I decided to make a collage. Still using nothing but Google Photos on my phone:

1. I select 7 pictures
2. Tap the + button in the upper right
3. Choose Collage
4. Voila!

While viewing the collage, I tap the share button , choose Facebook, and post to Friends. I also tapped the + and added the collage to my monthly Web Album on Google Photos.

During this lovely one hour walk, I took pictures, enjoyed having Mom point out more pictures, had fun editing them, and shared a collage to Facebook, and added the day’s collage to my monthly album … all before even getting back to the car!

Google Photos has removed all the work and left only the play

In years past, I would have taken my digital SLR camera – a Canon Rebel T3i – and taken many of the same pictures. After getting home I would need to transfer them from the camera to the computer, decide where to store them, spend some time doing the editing, upload the best ones to the web, make the collage and upload that too. That would probably take me a half hour using Picasa, much longer with other software. A half hour may not sound like much, but when you multiply that times all the days and all the pictures I like to take – well, I think you get the idea. And, worse than the time it takes is when I didn’t take the time and never enjoyed my pictures or shared them.

I love playing with my pictures and trying out the different creations that Google Photos includes. And, at the end of the day, I’m done. All my photos are safely, and privately, stored in my Google Account in the cloud. I can delete them from my phone to free up space for taking more! I also have Microsoft OneDrive grabbing a copy of all my phone’s photos for the ‘belt and suspenders’ protection. This is all automatic.

No work and all play makes me a happy girl!

You can learn to use Google Photos with Geeks on Tour tutorial videos. Some are free. To watch them all, you need to be a Geeks on Tour premium member. Here's a video that demonstrates exactly what I did in this article: