Anil Sabharwal, VP Photos, came out to tell us about the three new features coming soon to Google Photos. First though, he reminded us that we’re all terrible people:
The terribleness really comes from the fact that we don’t always share photos with each other, leaving friends out in the cold without pictures of themselves at events having fun. To get around this, Google Photos has three brand-new features to help you feel better about yourself.
First up is Suggested Sharing. If you’re at an event with a bunch of people, and have taken pictures of a lot of those people, and Google Photos recognizes those people, it will suggest photos that you might want to share. It’ll ping you via a notification as well as collect photos via a new “share” tab. Photos will pull out the best shots and recommend who you should share them with. You can review who its chosen if you want, or just hit send and those people will get an invite to that specific gallery. Even better, if those people have pictures from the same event, Photos can prompt them to add their own pictures to the same gallery, giving everyone access to all of the event photos in the same place.
Shared Libraries is a new menu option allowing you to automatically share photos with your contacts. You can share every photo you take, or select a subset of photos based on criteria such as the people in the photos, places, events, etc. The recipient will get any photos that you share with them, though they can choose to filter those even further by some of the same criteria — people, places, things, etc. — to add specific items directly to their main Photos view.
Photo Books take a bit of the nostalgia for printing out photos to look at and add in some convenience. Google Photos already separates out photos from vacations, events, people, etc. making it even easier for you to simply select some photos, choose the new Photo Book option, and get cracking. Photos will select some of the best photos and arrange them. You can view and tweak what it’s set up, and once approved you can order a soft cover or hard cover Photo Book that will arrive at your door in a few days. Google Photos will occasionally suggest Photo Books to you (because duh, Google would love for you to buy all of them) which you can view or ignore as you see fit. Photo Books star at $9.99, and will be available in certain locations today. All I/O attendees were gifted with a free hardcover Photo Book.
Google Lens will also be integrated into Google Photos. Lens will be able to pull up information based on photos that you’ve already taken. The architectural boat tour of Chicago that they used as the example had Lens pull up information on the Willis Sears Tower, as well as grab a phone number off of a screenshot and allow you to call that number. Lens will be rolling out to Google Photos later this year.
Probably the coolest announcement for Google Photos wasn’t even delivered during the Photos portion of the address. Sundar Pichai discussed Google’s Machine Learning at great length. One of the applications was for Photos, allowing obstructions to be removed from photos. Watch, and be impressed:
These features should begin rolling out to Google Photos over the next few months. Which features are you looking forward to the most? Tell us all about it in the comment section below, or or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
