
The book, Learn Google Photos 2020, was released on September 1, 2020. At roughly 150 pages, you might say TL;DR – too long don’t read, so we’re writing this chapter by chapter summary for you.
- Amazon.com
Color paperback: $24.95
Kindle edition: $7.95 - Special spiral bound edition = $34.95
- 2 hour online workshop with Chris = $49
- Geeks on Tour Premium members: the .pdf version of the book is included with membership. Download the book from GeeksOnTour.com/eBooks
More than a book
Introduction
Chapter 1: Your Google Account
Chapter 2: Getting Started on Mobile Devices
Chapter 3: Collecting the rest of your life’s photos and videos
Chapter 4: Getting around in Google Photos
- Website and cloud storage space (photos.google.com)
- Android App
- iOS App
Chapter 5: How to find the memories you’re looking for
Chapter 6: Keep your memories safe
- Be careful with delete! Make sure you understand what you are deleting before you use it. Are you deleting the device copy, the cloud copy, or both? If you do delete by mistake, this chapter teaches how you can undelete if it has been less than 60 days.
- Photos and videos stored in your Google account are extremely safe, but as we all know, stuff happens. This chapter teaches how to copy your photos to one more cloud storage service, just in case.
Everything is uploaded, you also need to know how to download.
- On your phone, sometimes it is necessary to have photos stored locally on the device. You can download individual photos from the cloud to your device.
- On your computer, you should download at least your important albums. This chapter teaches how to do that.
- Google provides a tool called Takeout that will download your entire library of photos and videos. It does it using multiple .zip files however and can be very confusing. It does not preserve your albums.
Chapter 7: Editing to improve your photos
Chapter 8: Organizing with Albums and Favorites
- Showcase your good photos and videos
- Collecting your chosen photos in special categories
- To tell a story, you can add text blocks and maps.
- For sharing groups of pictures
- Collaborating with others for a group album
- To use for digital photo frames
- To use for making printed photo books
- To use for making movies or animations
- To use for downloading backups
- Making a Favorites album by starring photos
- Auto updating albums (aka Live Albums)
Chapter 9: Sharing
- Using a link you can share one photo or any number of photos and videos with any number of people. They don’t even need to have a Google account, anyone with the link can open it and see your photos.
- If you want to be more exclusive, you can share with specified individuals if they do have a Google account.
- Shared albums are wonderful for allowing groups of people to share with each other.
- Shared library is used if you want one partner to have access to your entire library.
- Sharing to another app is how you send photos via email, text, or post to social media like Facebook or Twitter.
Chapter 10: Surrounding yourself with your photos and creations
- Memories section: Google encourages us to reminisce by surfacing memories at the top of the mobile apps. In the Recent Highlights segment, you may see creations that Google has made for you. Sweet little movies are compiled from your photos and videos, collages, and animations.
- Next in the memories section, you can browse thru photos from this week 1 year ago, 2 years ago, and as far back as your photos go.
- Creations: You can make creations easily. Combine any photos and videos into movies, animations, and collages that will put a smile on your face and anyone you share with.
- Printing: built right in to Google Photos is a Print Store. You can order individual prints if you want, but the real beauty is easy, fast, and inexpensive it is to order photo books and mounted canvas wall prints.
- You can have your television displaying your memories like a big screensaver. You can also have slideshows constantly running on smaller screens of smart displays. Pick whatever albums you want to display on different screens. Your whole house can be filled with your memories being displayed. It can even happen at someone else’s house. If you share photos of your kids with your mother, she can have those photos automatically displayed on her TV or smart display.
Chapter 11: Troubleshooting and getting help
Chapter 12: Apple Photos and iCloud vs Google Photos
Apple Photos is the photo gallery or camera roll app that comes with your iPhone and iPad. It is also a more full-featured program that comes with Mac computers.
- with Google Photos you can delete the device copy of a photos and still keep the cloud copy
- with Apple Photos you cannot. Apple photos job is to keep all your Apple devices in sync. Add a photos with one device, it gets added to all. Delete a photo with one device and it is deleted from all – including the cloud.
- if you delete photos using Google photos, it is deleting the device copy. That deletion will be noticed by iCloud and the deletion will be synced to iCloud and all Apple devices.
Chapter 13: My favorite features
- All your photos in one place
- Editing
- Find a desired photo in a split second, even with 100,000 photos in my library
- Reminiscing
- Shared Library – automatically save partner’s photos of you
- Shared Albums
- Make Movies
- Google Lens for reading business cards
- Navigate to a Photo’s Location
Want to buy the book? Here’s the info.
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.
Chris, Question
I have a Google phone. Would like to copy some of the photos off my phone and put on my computer do that I can print and use for art projects.
I have a windows 7 operating system, and a wireless printer that I will be using . These are old and not sure able to accept Google. My iphone was easy to down load but having problem with google phone.
I would like to know if my computer system can be used, and how do I yransfer. I have a large backup system available.
Problem. I plugged my Google phone into the computer but could not find how to retrieve photos. Is there something I need to down load . Not very computer savvy.
Would your book help me with this.
Photos from your Google Phone should be uploaded to Google Photos. On your computer, go to photos.google.com, log in with your google account and you should see all your photos. Select the ones you want on your computer and click the 3-dot menu and choose Download. See this article for more detail: https://learngooglephotos.com/getting-your-pictures-down-from-the-google-photos-cloud/