Google Photos

After the hard drive crash experienced several weeks ago I ended up reinstalling Windows 10 and all desktop applications from scratch. Something I was avoiding for a very long time. Older versions of Windows used to get slower over time and the "restart from scratch" method was recommended at least once a year to clean up the system. Since Windows 7 this has no longer been the case, so I had an accumulated residue of 6-year worth of variety of applications.

One particular workflow I put a lot of attention to is digital photos. They come in RAW from several digital cameras and from smartphones, as JPEGs. I like hos the entire library is handled by Adobe Lightroom and it restored all the settings from backups nicely. I use Lightroom to do post processing and then I used to use Picasa to share JPEGs exported from Lightroom. But to my surprise, I realized Picasa was no longer available from Google. So I ended up installing Google Photos uploader only. It took a good couple of days to upload 200GB worth of photos to the cloud. But as it was progressing I really started appreciating the news simplified flow: use Lightroom for RAWs (Google Photos has a very useful option not to touch them) and then export processed photos to JPEGs for upload and sharing, which happens automatically. Once in the Cloud, the photos are extremely easy to organize into albums and share. Then they all sync across all devices: both iOS and Android, which is a huge advantage over competing offering from Apple.

Google Photos also has a brilliant feature that allows inviting others to contribute their photos to a cloud album. Finally merging sets from multi - camera events becomes easy.

I must say I won't be crying for Picasa. Lightroom is still unmatched for the professional workflow and Photos plugs into it nicely by picking up where Lightroom stops (at exported JPEGs).

The only missing feature in the mobile Photos App is persistent caching. It tries to optimize flash storage, but in my case - using a 200GB microSD card - I'd love to have them all downloaded permanently on devices for full resolution offline access. Such as on long haul flights. The same BTW applies to Lightroom Mobile. It is a great tool to sort and rate photos using an iPad, but requires a fast connection. Somehow again the app makers are missing the fast there are still white spots in Internet coverage while flash memory keeps growing without any speed limits. And for some completely unexplained reason the Photos App is not available on Android TV. Seems like a no brainer to fix this.