Google Photos – Can I get out?
rocketeer.be
rocketeer.be
"High quality" recompresses large files, but gives you unlimited storage space for these recompressed files.
"Original" doesn't recompress or alter the files at all, at the expense of using your Google Drive/Email/Storage space.
I'm not necessarily on board with auto photo backup (I don't completely trust it - some photos should just remain private), but I like that they give you this choice.
What I really (really) hate is that they've moved the delete button. It's no longer a button on the toolbar at the bottom (on the Android app), it's in the menu and labelled "Delete local copy". I take a lot of throwaways while trying to get the right shot - deleting photos is an every-day part of my workflow (I delete more than I keep). This has now gone from one quick tap to three (there's a confirmation dialog when you finally click the delete button). This is a very frustrating change.
Even if it did show up, I like to review the photos full-screen and flip back and forth, then delete. Having to remember which of 5 shots was the best and select the bad ones in thumbnail view would just be painful. I think mine is a fairly common workflow too, as I've heard a few people complain about the same thing.
I just tested on Android with the latest build and I get a trash icon in the expected places - in the bottom right corner in the single photo view and in the top right corner in the thumbnail view (once at least one photo is selected).
BTW, I work on the photos team.
There are geo-tagging feature in the new app: * For any photo you can click on the "info" icon (i with a circle around it) which will show the photo's location (if we have geo information for the photo) * The search functionality makes use of geo-tagging information - so you can search for photos from a specific place.
Is that what you were looking for, or is there something else?
I can't really comment on what might or might not happen in the future, but I can pass on requests/comments to our PMs and/or help you out with the application.
According to Google Play Store I have the latest version of Photos (I see all the other changes, including the welcome walkthrough).
I don't get a trash icon in either photo or thumbnail view, with 0, 1 or more photos selected.
I'm not singed in on the Photos app (I wasn't signed in on the old app either) as I'm not entirely comfortable on the dependence on web services or the auto upload features (which I do appreciate can be disabled). I'm not sure if that makes a difference.
Honestly, the old Gallery app was perfect for my workflow. Offline, gave me access to metadata, etc.
It's frustrating as I have to click the menu button, then Delete, then OK. I used to just hit Trash icon and that was it. For one-off deletions it's only a little slower - for working through a days worth of shots (or worse, high speed drive shots transferred from my camera).
(I work on the Takeout team)
If you don't want that behavior, or just want to export part of your drive (or photos) collection you can expand that product in the Takeout UI and just select certain folders.
It seems implausible that anyone would consider it a good idea to reencode a RAW file as a matter of course. Transcode it to process and/or compress it? Sure. But what comes out the other end isn't usually a native RAW file. (native RAW -> DNG workflows don't count.) This assumes that such a thing is even possible: e.g. that all RAW formats they'll see permit an alternate compressed encoding. If they did, someone needs a good stern talking-to. Pretty much the last thing that anyone who uses RAW files would expect is a workflow that tampers with the files while still allegedly remaining in the native RAW format.
I will file bugs for the drive-sync issue and the issue with the large downloads failing and try to get some answers.
I think it's fair to announce products so devs can be ready when the API becomes available.
However, sure: I'll bite. No: announcing random stuff that we can't play with and that they won't talk to us about is totally useless for developer. This entire event was just about causing people to go "wow, they are smart". I am a developer quite interested in 3D video, and so despite seeing Project Jump and going "ugh, another end-user product announcement", I figure I might as well talk to the engineers about it: only, they aren't willing to say anything about what might be available or how it works or essentially anything about their plans... so good luck "getting ready".
Regardless, the next thing you really need to defend, as this is what we are talking about: what are you, as a developer, doing to get ready for Photos? Google I/O has become less and less developer-focussed ever since it started (I have gone every year), and has turned into more and more of just a showcase of their end-user products. This year as the epitome, and all of the developers that I know who attended were quite disappointed; even the ones who still liked last year's somehow were now also saying "this event seems to have lost its purpose and is no longer useful".
> Regardless, the next thing you really need to defend, as this is what we are talking about: what are you, as a developer, doing to get ready for Photos?
You can't imagine how unlimited storage of images and videos have no implications to devs and how we view curation of photos? Thats one less limitation to worry about.
I 100% agree that I/O is becoming less and less developer focused. Lots of non-developers want to attend (I blame the freebies they gave - looks like that has stopped so it might get better). I/O (or any other 'developer' conference) goes beyond the technical. There is a lot of self-promotion, PR, recruitment (in the HR sense, and recruitment into the 'developer ecosystem')
(Trying to convert URI to Path String results in null with new Photos app since _data value is set to null for some reason).
Trying to reach someone who can look at Android Photos app since its breaking a large number of PhotoGraphy apps.
It's definitely something that we've talked about internally and is something that I'd personally love to see in the product.
I can reproduce this on my own account.
I uploaded a raw (NEF) using desktop uploader using the "Original" setting. Downloading through the photos app returns the original NEF file.
Downloading via Drive returns a file with the original name ("Foo.NEF") that is actually a jpeg.
So this is clearly broken.
Bug filed. I will follow up when there is some kind of resolution.
Once you select one or more images, the delete button shows up in the toolbar. Just one tap. http://i.imgur.com/EH2M5iM.jpg
According to Google Play Store I have the latest version of Photos (I see all the other changes, including the welcome walkthrough).
I don't get a trash icon in either photo or thumbnail view, with 0, 1 or more photos selected.
Though I can understand for those using the app entirely signed out this can be frustrating. Thanks for the feedback. I do hope you sign in however, there are a lot of things available to you signed in that simply don't exist in the signed out view.
It would be useful if the app made the differences clearer - you can see the confusion in this thread alone where people just can't see why my delete icon is missing and theirs is present (and the ensuing downvotes because it looks like I'm just doing something wrong).
I have always used the app offline, so it's quite frustrating that a major part of my workflow has been made more difficult. I'm not sure what the benefit was in changing this behaviour for offline users - there's always been a trash/delete icon. Now someone has just taken it away.
Ideally, I'd love to see it return and the confirmation dialog to disappear (or be configurable with a preference). Or if you're using it offline, add a confirmation dialog ("You're PERMANENTLY deleting this") with a "Don't show this warning again" box. And possibly add a "Deleted (Undo)" toast (delay actual deletion on the filesystem by 3-5 seconds).
I think most users understand the semantics of deleting a file, and if this change only affects offline users then the affected users already know that delete means delete forever.
I would actually consider signing in at some point, but I now feel my hand is being forced just to regain some fundamental functionality.
Additionally - what about users who can't use the app online? For example users with limited data packages or users who travel a lot (where roaming data can cost upwards of $5/MB).
Too bad the app appears to have been going unmaintained for some time now. It doesn't even support retina displays on OSX (in a photo app!)
Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Photo_Gallery
Download: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/photo-galler...
Edit: the offline-installer is hidden on this page: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/essentials-i...
I just wish that Google would bring back the simple online photo sharing that they used to have with Picasa. The Google+ merge ruined all that.
Carousel respects whatever folder naming convention you have. All photos in your dropbox show up in Carousel's photo list.
Pictures on Carousel are always saved to the "Carousel" folder in your dropbox, but you can move them around to respect your preferred folder structure without damaging anything.
I do know that Carousel uses the DateTimeOriginal EXIF tag to set the date. You can use this command to re-tag photos, for example:
exiftool -DateTimeOriginal="2009:01:01 00:00:06" DSCF0038.JPGA large majority of users [1] take photos with their phones, upload a select few on social media, maybe with some basic filters/edits, and forget about the rest.
Google Photos is designed for that use case, and not for the 1% power users.
[1] No data to back this up, just my two cents.
i wonder how much longer this will be true.
In all seriousness, could they cross-reference dates in G+ posts and photos to see that you mentioned being on your honeymoon when it was taken? Seems like something they'd do if G+ was actually a thing people used.
Even just seeing that you're on an irregular stay in Thailand (which it got from your Android) right after your marriage can be telling.
D'oh.
Gmail
Calendar
SMS
"Now on Tap" can MiTM content of every Android appMaybe it's different if you have kids or something... but my folks only have about 60 photos of my entire youth and that's 40 too many.
I created a prototype[1] 5 years ago of a hierarchical timeline using timestamps. It had it's own problems, but I would have thought by now someone would have figured out a solution. Machine learn a hierarchy where each coarser level has a subset which reasonably summarizes the next more detailed level.
[1] - example http://pixtimeline.com/view/#105946173008403248796/553914066...
I love how it has mashed-up my photos into categories, stories, animations and collages. Literally love it, it IS great. But backup system, it is not.
[1] http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free-microsoft-azure-explorer.a...
From what I have read, they compress the files when 'High Quality' is chosen, so I'm guessing if you select original, it all counts towards your storage?
my interest was more on the video than the photo, when you click the option "High quality (free unlimited storage)" the help mention it goes as far as 1080P for videos which is fair game for something free.
So I uploaded a couple of 720P videos, and redownloaded them to compare if they were the same, what formats was supported, etc.
The good: it works kind of like a private Youtube, it does process the video so when you watch it online you end up having it to auto 360P, which sucks a little. But if when you redownload the video you get the original one (not recompressed).
The bad: the UI and file naming is a joke.
I understand they wanted to make it simple to use and organise a lot of photos and videos, but not being able to see the filename to quickly select a bunch of files and put them in a group (or collection) is beyond me.
But let focus on something even simpler: select an item and no file name ? I mean com'on google, am I not suppose to find/search easily trough my stuff ?
No regex in file name search either ...
My guess is the photo part was the main goal and the video part been added quickly without much of a thinking about it, I do hope it would get better.
So far disappointing, if I was to upload all my videos there, I could not organise them easily and worst I could not find them, it would be useless.
I mean, come on, did you really expect this? Most consumer-oriented search systems I know of don't have this feature.
I'd expect wildcard searches too, but only because Google is a search company. When I see a search box, I'm usually happy if it does a contains search instead of an exact match, that's how low my expectations have become.
but for videos, sorry I need a way to differentiate them, and a thumbnail is not enough, I need a either the file name or a way to search more than plain keywords
UX for photos and videos can not be the same
But, I like the OneDrive (or Dropbox if you don't mind the politics of Dropbox) model: keep all photos and videos in chronological order, edit file names, if desired, to add description after the file stamp, and generate one off share URI links for friends to share pictures.
That said I appreciate having the extra backups, even if lower resolution, on Google photos.
If you have concrete examples I could investigate.
scenario: uploading a bunch of video files all named in the same pattern
when coming back to the google photo interface to put those files in the same group, searching their name does not return the full list, only part of it.
Only by searching "recently added" I can then find and add the missing files.
If I could ask for features:
- show the file name when you select an item
- allow to search file name by regex
If I take a bunch of photos and then send some of them through Hangouts before I get home to my WiFi those photos doesn't get backed up. I'm guessing it's because Hangouts uses G+ albums for the photos, so technically the photos are on Google's servers, but they're not where I expect them to be (in Auto backup).
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9420455/android-applicati...
This sometimes can cause surprises (for example setting back to highlights from full backup, to your point).
In my case it was simply missing pictures. It was reported by multiple users as well, Google had a ticket about it.
Did I miss the update? All that's mentioned below is that Google drive offers different files. There's nothing more about the download link.
1) you have to do it one by one (or in very small batches), because the zip export is broken
2) you get a different view via Google Drive
(I don't use those service, cannot even begin to imagine why one would upload pictures to Google or use Google Drive, but - that's my take away from the article and my own interpretation)
"Mwahaha! Those sucker users will try a download and think they can get all their photos back. But they can't! They're ours now! Ours!"
Hey, it worked for Instagram.[1]
[1] http://www.cnet.com/news/instagram-says-it-now-has-the-right...
it should actually kill the cloud because storage is cheap. but all cloud providers go out of their way to make their platform painful to use without their cloud.
Apple makes backing up photos with iphoto annoying. Google makes backing up photos via an app much easier than via usb or rsync on your home network... etc
_My_ datastore still exists and proudly provides those files from my redundantly stored, checksummed, auto-repairing local filesystem. No, I don't have an off-site backup. But neither had Webshots once they decided to shut down.
I'm not sure what's more likely, a trustworthy-looking service disappearing out of the blue, or a RAIDed NAS being damaged in a way that data is lost.
"By 2004, Webshots was grossing $15M/year, had more than 200,000 paid subscribers, and was the #1 photo sharing site and top 50 media property per ComScore. In the same year, Alexa ranked Webshots the second largest English language privately held Web media property (behind weather.com)."
I won't count Twitpics as it was a posting service, not a storage service, but I expect there are a few closures I've missed....
1TB of space on Google Drive is only $120/year in opex and zero capex.
Different people put different market values on privacy of data from 3rd-party cloud providers.
In the market segment which includes HP MicroServer and Dell T20, capex and opex can be amortized over other workloads, using virtualization for NAS VM, router VM, desktop VM, etc. People in this segment may have sunk costs in existing hard drives.
There are plenty of places where self-hosting makes sense. 1TB is not one of them, but many other sizes are.
it will limit how you can use that space. (file size limit, etc)
it will require spyware apps to be able to upload photos
I happily pay for things, but when I do I like to verify that it does what it says on the box.
Google clearly states that photos synced to Google Photos with unlimited storage get compressed a lot. On the other hand, if you pay Google for more Google Drive space and use Photos to sync your images there instead, there is no compression.
Now, I get that this is supposed to be a "cloud service" and whatnot. But I'd prefer if it was very clear when I choose to upload them to the cloud, and I'd also prefer to pick and choose which photos go into the cloud by default. If people want to upload everything by default to Google's server, that should be an opt-in feature.
It only uploads your photos if you check the "Back up & sync" checkbox when you first start the app. If you uncheck that box, it won't upload anything. Don't spread FUD.
And, as previous cases showed, permissions granted through default-checked boxes, or permissions granted through fine print hidden in the ToS are legally not binding, meaning the uploading is considered a computer crime.
Thilo Weichert, data protection officer of the state of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, did several law cases based on this against Facebook, and almost all of them.
So, again, what are you talking about?
Everything that touches your private data has to be opt-in. Or it does not count as "explicit permission", meaning the upload, processing, etc is illegal.
Whether or not this is true in Germany is something I don't know.
..but if you are an US company, we hate you for the votes.
And the parliament of SH relies on the fact that mass surveillance will have to be cancelled, too, as it violates several data protection laws.
The constitutional court struck down the mass surveillance laws already two times, they’ll do it again.
And yes, I was one of the people protesting on the street against the new laws regarding Melderegisterzugriff
And, as previous cases showed, permissions granted through default-checked boxes, or permissions granted through fine print hidden in the ToS are legally not binding, meaning the uploading is considered a computer crime.
Thilo Weichert, data protection officer of the state of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, did several law cases based on this against Facebook, and almost all of them.