5 Google Photos Features You Should Try Now

Google Photos launched in 2015 as an online photo and video storage platform, but over the past eight years it has grown to include more, such as photo sharing. But if you only use Google Photos to store and share photos, you’re missing out on a lot of useful features.

Here are five Google Photos features you should try now.

Search for words in pictures

Say you buy a new device and need to enter your Wi-Fi password. You took a picture of the password months or even years ago. Instead of digging through your photos to find the password, you can search for “Wi-Fi” or any other phrase in your Google Photos library.

Google Photos uses optical character recognition, which allows it to recognize words in your photos. All you have to do is enter the phrase into the search function and Google Photos will find photos containing that phrase.

Make your next purchase from a photo

When shopping for big items, like a sofa or dining table, you might want to shop around to make sure you’re getting the best deal. You can run your Google Photos via Google lens to find similar products to make sure you don’t get scammed.

You can also use Google Lens to identify and purchase other items, such as food, plants, and clothing, and you can use it to translate and read signage for you. Here’s how to use Google Lens in the mobile app.

1. Open Google Photos on your phone or tablet.

2. Tap the photo you want to use Google Lens on.

3. Tap the Google Lens icon near the bottom of the screen – the icon has three rounded corners and a dot in place of the fourth corner.

4. Google Lens will generate a new menu at the bottom of your screen with options like Translate, To research and Shopping. Tap the one you want to access.

You can use Google Lens in the desktop version of Google Photos, but it only transcribes and translates text from images. Here’s how to use it.

1. Go to Google Photos and sign in to your account.

2. Click on the photo on which you want to use Google Lens.

3. Near the top of the photo, you should see a bubble with the Google Lens icon and text that says “Copy text from image.” The image text will appear next to your photo in a separate menu.

Hide specific people and dates in Memories

Memories shows you photos and videos from years ago, content based on certain events and locations, and items with certain people present. Google, however, allows you to mask these images using the company’s facial recognition software. This is useful in case you break up with your partner and don’t want to see their stupid face anymore.

Here’s how to hide certain people and places on your mobile device.

1. Open the Google Photos app.

2. Tap your profile in the top right corner.

3. Faucet Google Photos settings.

4. Faucet Memories.

From here you can select Hide people and pets or Hide dates. Picking out people and pets makes the faces of people and pets appear in your photos, and you can select as many to hide as you want. Picking out Appointment asks you to give it two dates, a start date and an end date, and any photos between those dates won’t appear in your memories.

You can also do this on the desktop.

1. Go to Google Photos and sign in to your account.

2. Click on Settings.

3. Click the arrow next to Memories.

You will see the same Hide people and pets and Hide dates choice, whichwork the same way as app versions.

Make a scrapbook or canvas print

With Google Photos, you don’t need to go through a third-party store or website to create an album or print your photos on a canvas. You can collect all of these and buy them from Google Photos through Print Shop.

You can access the Print Shop in the mobile version of Google Photos (represented by a shopping cart icon in the upper left corner of your screen) and in the desktop version (which is on the left side of your screen). Once here, you can choose to make a canvas print, scrapbook or picture prints of your photos. Google Photos also tells you the starting price of each item. You can have your items shipped to your home or have them delivered to a participating local store for pickup.

Read more: Best photo books for 2023: Shutterfly, Mixbook, Snapfish and more

Edit the sky

Every day can’t be blue, sunny skies. If you are a Google One subscriber however, you may be able to make it appear that way in your photos. Google Photos has a lot of editing options, and the one called Sky lets you adjust the look of the sky. This feature won’t make a photo taken at night look like it was taken at noon, but you can at least make that night photo look like it was taken at dusk.

To learn more about Google services, see why you should download google maps offline before your trip and how to blur your house on google maps.