Dominate Google Photos with these lesser known features

Google Photos was released seven years ago on May 26, ushering in a new era for Android and mass photo backup. The service stands as one of the best photo editing apps for a suite of free unlimited backups, smart classification, sharing features and editing tools. And the feature set has only grown since 2015.

Despite having plenty of time to familiarize yourself with the app, there are a number of Nifty features that you have yet to discover. Here are some of the best hidden and underrated Google Photos features to help you edit and organize your snaps.

Tweak to resize thumbnails

Believe it or not, I wanted to write this article to show you how you can tweak the image thumbnails in the Google Photos app (from the Photos tab). The pinch zoom is not limited to the main library; Automatic placement of photos and things It works when searching and browsing albums

See also: How to access Google Photos on any device

Simply pinch inwards to zoom out to see 36 small square thumbnails, it’s very easy when you want to see more pictures at once. Alternatively, you can pinch the outside to keep a minimum of 10 thumbnails on-screen at once, to better see which shots are landscapes and portraits.

Perspective correction

Take lots of documents and cityscapes photos? Then the perspective correction tool may be for you (the icon to the left of “Reset” when editing a photo). This tool lets you straighten documents and buildings.

It takes a little practice to perfect the perspective by drawing four corner points around the relevant subject. Although the results can be quite great, and it is especially effective if you need to print a document when the image was taken at a slight angle.

Sky Edit

Sky adjustments aren’t as drastic as Xiaomi’s skyscraper functionality, which allows you to switch to a completely blue sky or a cloudy sky in your photo for a starry night. Still, it’s a neat tool for lightening a scene and subtle changes in mood.

Google One Extra

Along with the Google One and Pixel exclusive features, Google Photos has many additional tools for paying customers. This can usually be found through Edit> Tools And is marked with a “1” icon for Google One customers.

Options include color focus to wash background colors and pop your theme. Portrait light editing lets you change the direction of your face light coverage. Obscurity is especially useful; It not only adjusts the intensity of the background bokeh but also adds to the old portraits that were not originally obscure.

Locked folder and archive functionality

There are times when you don’t want some photos or videos to appear in your default Google Photos stream. It could be something as sensitive as sensitive material or receipts and other documents. The service has two functions to address these issues.

Locked folder functionality for starters (Move to the three-point menu> Locked folder), Which allows you to hide the snap behind the screen lock of your device These items will not be backed up or shared, and will be deleted if you uninstall Google Photos. If you switch phones, they will not be automatically moved to a new device.

File Secure Coverage: What is Samsung Secure Folder and how can you make the most of it?

Archive functionality, on the other hand, lets you move photos and videos outside of the normal Google Photos stream. It’s easy for those who want to keep pictures but don’t want to see them in the library Think screenshots or pictures of papers. Items can be moved to archive by tapping Move to Three-Dot Menu> Archive.

Either way, you can access the archive and locked folder in Google Photos via the Libraries tab.

Manual face tagging

This is where manual face tagging comes in – you can tag and untag a picture as you wish. All you have to do is navigate to the photo in question, tap the three-dot menu in the top-right corner, and hit the pencil icon in the people field. From here, you can tap the face tag below the original image to select another person to view and tag.

Search for words in the picture

Google Photos has been optical character recognition (OCR) smart for some time, allowing it to detect text in photos. After all, you can search for words, and the service will use OCR to see if those words appear in your image.

I use it often when I want to type a Wi-Fi password on a new review device. I just search for “router” and Google Photos will find the image of my Wi-Fi password, because the word “router” is also present in the photo. This is not perfect, as the service will also show me pictures of other gadgets that it (incorrectly) thinks are routers. But it’s still something I found very easy.

Next up: The best Google Photos option

Any other under-the-radar features for Google Photos? Let us know in the comments below!