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Google Photos is better at sharing your photos than you are

At Google I/O 2017, the company puts more of its vision learning to work to improve your photos and videos and how and with whom to share them.

Joshua Goldman Managing Editor / Advice
Managing Editor Josh Goldman is a laptop expert and has been writing about and reviewing them since built-in Wi-Fi was an optional feature. He also covers almost anything connected to a PC, including keyboards, mice, USB-C docks and PC gaming accessories. In addition, he writes about cameras, including action cams and drones. And while he doesn't consider himself a gamer, he spends entirely too much time playing them.
Expertise Laptops, desktops and computer and PC gaming accessories including keyboards, mice and controllers, cameras, action cameras and drones Credentials
  • More than two decades experience writing about PCs and accessories, and 15 years writing about cameras of all kinds.
Joshua Goldman
2 min read
Watch this: Google Photos gets smarter with suggested sharing

With Google Photos, you'll no longer have to worry about finding and sharing that perfect shot.

Announced at Google I/O 2017, the updated app will not only be able to remind you to share photos, but also whom to share them with. Called Suggested Sharing, the feature will use your sharing habits, select the best shots and then recommend whom to share them with based on who's in the photos.

Google Photos will also now have the option to share libraries. You'll still have complete control over what you share, such as a subset or from a certain date, but your entire library can be shared as well. People you share your library with can view and save your photos to their library. Photos' machine learning can also be set to share images containing only specific people.

Google also announced the launch of Photo Books. Again, using machine learning, you'll be able to select as many images as you want and Photos will analyze them and select only the best images to include for your book.

Photos will then lay out your photos into a book that you can edit before you're ready to have it printed. A 7-inch softcover book will cost $9.99 for up to 20 pages, while a 9-inch, 20-page hardcover book will set you back $19.99.

Eventually, Google Photos will use machine learning to automatically build a photo book for you. For example, it will recognize a group of images as part of a vacation or wedding and build a suggested photo book.

All the cool stuff Google announced at I/O

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Also incorporated into Photos is Google's Lens initiative, announced at I/O, that uses vision-based computing capabilities that can understand what's in your pictures to help you do much more with them. For example, open a photo of a famous painting, and with a single tap you'll be able to pull up information about the artist and painting. Similarly, a photo of a phone number on the outside of a business can be dialed simply by tapping on the number in the image.

Lens will be rolled out into Photos later this year.