Picture this – you’re at the beach, walking along the waterfront. The sky is lit up in red, pink and orange as the sun begins to sink below the horizon. You stop to watch the beautiful sunset, and take your phone out to capture the moment. As you go to take a picture, your phone suddenly flashes up the dreaded notification – “Storage Full.”
As we continue to take more photos than ever, our need for extra storage increases too. We have the perfect solution for you - Google Photos. Google’s cloud based storage service allows you to easily organise and share your photos and videos, and will help you manage all your media with its AI technology.
Google Photos was launched in 2015 and has become a hugely popular storage service worldwide, with over 1 billion users as of 2019. No matter what device you have, iOS or Android, macOS or Windows, it works seamlessly on every platform. It will also save space on your phone because all your media will be stored in the cloud. With Google being named the world’s most trustworthy tech company of 2022, you can be sure that your personal media will be protected.
Multi-platform access - How to sign up, download and get started
Getting started with Google Photos is very simple and quick. It can be accessed on numerous smart devices, such as your phone, laptop or tablet. It can be downloaded on both Android and iOS devices by going to either the Google Play or App Store. You can also access your photo library on your browser by going to photos.google.com.
Once you have the app, open it up and sign into your Google account. If you don’t have a Google account, it is very easy to open one. Simply click here to sign up. Google will walk you through the quick process and once you are finished, your Google account is ready to go.
Once that is done, all you have to do is follow the instructions from Google Photos, which will guide you through the process of uploading your photos and videos to your library
Mechanisms of Google Photos Storage
You have different options when it comes to storing your media on Google Photos.
When you sign up for a Google account, you get 15 GigaBytes (GB) of free storage across all of Google’s platforms. To buy more storage space, you can subscribe to its Google One storage plan. The subscription service starts at $15 HKD ($2 USD) a month for 100 GB of storage. If you need more storage, you can also upgrade to the next membership tier.
Google Photos also comes with handy tools, such as one that will show you how much storage you have left on your phone and recommendations of photos and videos to delete if you need more storage. It will also send you a notification once you get close to reachingyour 15 GB limit, allowing you to ensure you have enough time to buy more. This way, no matter how many pictures you take, you will always have enough space to store them with Google.
Privacy and Security/backups
With one of the ‘world’s most advanced security infrastructures’ you can be confident that your media will be fully protected from any online threats. All of your data is encrypted, which keeps it private and secure. Google has installed multiple security layers, using HTTPS encryption technology and encryption at rest.
Data responsibility is another of Google’s prime objectives when it comes to Google photos. Some people may worry about Google’s AI face recognition system, however, there is little to worry about. Face grouping (where Google automatically groups similar faces together to make searching through photos easier) can be turned on and off and if you choose for it to be off, all the ‘faces’ on your account will be deleted. Faces are also only visible to you.
From choosing what media you want backed up, editing location information on photos, to securely sharing albums with specific people only, you have complete control over your whole Google Photos experience.
*This article is brought to you by Capture HK.
Capture HK is the premier analogue media digitisation company in Hong Kong.
Capture HK's business covers photographs, photo album digitisation, videotapes digitisation, including VHS, S-VHS, VHS-C, S-VHS-C Hi-8, Video8, Digital8, DV, DVCAM, MiniDV, DVC and digital media digitisation, including Secure Digital (SD), Smart Media (SM), MultiMediaCard (MMC) Compact Flash (CF), xD-Picture Card, Memory Stick, USB Drive, CDROM, DVD.
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