Author: Mike Stone

Your guide to Google Photos

Google Photos’ greatest claim to fame is that it offers free, unlimited storage forever.

It’s a free iOS and Android app that has been around for a couple years now, and with 500 million users it must be doing something right.

It is also available as an online service via your browser, and all you need to access it is a standard Google account, which is useful if you have a million and one snaps cluttering up your hard drive that you want to offload onto the cloud.

Google Photos Download Google Photos
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Your guide to Google Photos

About that free storage

The best feature of Google Photos is surely the free unlimited storage. This is an even better offer than Flickr, which itself offers a very generous 1,000 gigs.

But to use this storage, photos cannot be more than 16 megapixels, and videos no bigger than 1080p HD – ruling out 4K video, for example. In addition, Google stores what it describes as “high quality” versions of your original files, so its algorithms decide and modify the resolution of your files, if necessary.

You can still use Google Photos if you want to upload bigger files (or simply retain your original resolution), by accessing the 15GB you get free with any Google account.

Of course, this amount of storage won’t last long, but you can pay $1.99 per month (or prepay $19.99 per year) for up to 100GB, and $9.99 a month (or $99.99 annually) for a terabyte. But stick to the limits and let Google decide the resolution, and it’s all gratis.

Regarding privacy, Google says that everything you upload is all totally secure and private – accessible only to you, and anyone your share stuff with.

What can it do?

Back up your entire image library

An obvious function for Google Photos is as a cloud-based archive and backup for your precious memories, in addition to any physical backups you might also have.

Access all images on all devices – and TV

Hardly a unique selling point, but it’s worth noting that if up do indeed use Google Photos to upload all your photos and videos, then you’ll be able to view them on any connected device, without having to download them. Thanks to Chromecast and Airplay support, you can view them on your TV, too.

Automatically upload photos… or not

The app will automatically upload pictures to the cloud, allowing you to save space by deleting files on your phone if needed. This can be turned on or off, and you can choose to upload photos manually, too.

Search visually

Google Photos allows you to search by visual category, based on people, places and things in them, without the need for tags. Some users have complained that it’s not so great at recognizing individual pets, among other things. Personally, I found this function pretty disappointing, with many objects not recognized by the search engine. But Google being Google, this is an area that should improve over time.

Share directly from the app

There’s no need to cut and paste or leave the app. Select up to 1,500 photos and then chose Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, email or whatever, and simply send.

Make movies and more

Google Photos can automatically create movies, collages, GIFs, panoramas and more from your shots. Or you can create them yourself, by manually gathering together your preferred images.

Straightforward editing

Choose a filter for really simple re-touching, or you can fiddle around with levels such as warmth, tint, saturation, exposure, and contrast. Crop manually, or chose a specific aspect ratio to suit you – and, of course, you can rotate images.

Categorize by place, thing, time – or whatever

Google Photos makes a number of suggestions about how you can order your collection. You can also designate your own, to fit in with your own cataloging idiosyncrasies

Invite others to share

Despite the fact it had its origins in Google Plus, Google Photos isn’t trying to be any type of social media network, so you can’t give other people’s photos likes or ratings. What it does allow you to do is share albums with others and allow them to contribute to a shared store of pics, which is useful if you’ve just both come back from a trip and shared camera duties, for example.

Clean, ad-free interface

As you’d expect from a Google product, the interface is minimalist, functional and clean. It’s simple to navigate, but you may need to do a little digging around to find some features. And there are no pesky ads to accidentally click on.

Display photo metadata

You can view when the photo was taken, what size the file is and what device it was taken with. And there’s a little Google map to indicate exactly where, too. And if you want to keep your location private on shared photos, you can turn off geo-tagging information in Preferences.

Live share your library

In addition to sharing photos and albums, you can set up a Partner account that will automatically share photos with another Google Photos user in real time. You can also add filters to ensure that person only gets to see what you want them to.

Getting started

On your computer

If you decide to go with Google Photos, there are a number of routes you can take. If you’re planning on using it as a backup to all your existing photos, you’re probably best-off uploading these from your computer.

Assuming you already have a Google account, click on the nine square apps button on the top-right of the homepage to access the apps menu, and click on the Google Photos windmill-style icon.

You’ll find a screen that invites you to drag and drop your photos onto the screen to upload them to the Google Photo cloud.

Before you do this, make sure you go to the Settings in the left-hand menu and decide if you want to go for free unlimited storage of high quality images or keep your originals at full resolution.

Now you can start to drag and drop images and videos onto the screen to be uploaded. Be warned, this could take a very long time, depending on the number of files and the speed of your internet connection.

Be aware, also, that depending where your photos are stored (for example, mine are in the Apple Photos application), you may not be able to drag them straight onto the Google Photos window. Instead, copy them over to a temporary folder on your desktop and drag them from there.

Once you have your photos uploaded, you can view them, share them, retouch them and create collages, movies and more.

If you want to have all new photos automatically uploaded from your computer, Google has a download that does exactly that.

On your device

Once you’ve downloaded the Google Photos app to your device, you’ll need to enable it to access your camera by following the on-screen prompt. After doing this, make a decision on whether you want the app to automatically upload photos for you.

Under Settings, you can choose whether the app backs up your photos automatically or not. If this is toggled off, you can simply select Archive on the three dot (…) menu and that photo will be uploaded.

You can easily see whether or not your photo is in the Google Photos cloud – if it has a cloud symbol with a line through it, it is only available on the device you’re holding in your hand.

From this point, you’re free to retouch, share, create collages or simply view the photo on any device.

In summary

The Positives

  • Free unlimited space for photos and vids (subject to resolution restrictions)
  • No annoying ads
  • Nice, clean interface
  • Effective sharing options
  • Useful editing features

The Negatives

  • Photos over 16 megapixels, videos above 1080p automatically downgraded in quality. Or you can pay for storage to preserve the original
  • Editing features could be more powerful
  • Issues with visual searching, although these should improve

The Takeaway

Bottom line, if you’re a general photo snapper, rather than a pro, want free, unlimited space for your photos, aren’t too bothered by not being able to upload pics that are greater than 16 megapixels (or video chunkier than 1080p, e.g. 4K), this is for you. Professional users would probably want more powerful editing features, but they’re more than adequate for the general user.

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40 free classic movies worth watching on YouTube

They come, they go, but one thing is certain: There are always some films on YouTube worth watching. Some of them are great, some are well-known, and many are not. And quite a few are simply so bad they’re brilliant. Here are some we’ve picked out from across genres and decades for your enjoyment. And best of all, they’re all free.

40 free movies worth watching on YouTube

Sci-Fi spectaculars

There’s a whole galaxy of sci-fi on YouTube. Let’s blast off with the black and white silent epic Metropolis (1927). Set in a divided future city, it features a female replicant and inspired many later movies, such as Blade Runner (1982).

Metropolis

If you’re looking for something less intellectually taxing, check out This Island Earth (1955). It’s a lot of star-bound, rubber alien monster fun. For something a bit creepier, the original version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) retains its full paranoia-inducing powers after all these years.

Moving a little further into the future, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979) shows us what life will be like in 400 years – basically the 70s in space. A much more serious anime cyberpunk classic is Akira (1988), set in Neo-Tokyo after World War Three.

Apocalypse then

And speaking terminal world war, The Day After (1983) is a must-see if you love depressing yourself with the consequences of nuclear Armageddon. It’s always relevant!

A re-imagining of the late 1980s and the build-up to a superpower war that (thankfully) never happened is the subject of the superb pseudo-documentary World War Three (1998).

Referencing another war entirely, one seminal sci-fi movie that tackles men’s worst attitudes toward women is The Stepford Wives (1975).

Far-flung fantasy

Dune (1984) was an ambitious attempt at getting Frank Herbert’s epic desert planet space opera onto the big screen, and the three-hour movie by David Lynch sort of does the job, with some dubious help from Sting.

Leviathan (1989) stars Robocop’s Peter Weller, in an uneven shot at moving The Thing (1982) into the ocean depths, while Apollo 18 (2011) is a great little found-footage flick that tells the “true” story of why NASA never went back to the moon.

Blood suckers and zombies

If you prefer a walk on the dark side, there’s plenty to satisfy on YouTube — Starting with one of the first (and to my mind still one of the best) vampire flicks, the black and white silent Nosferatu (1922).

Nosferatu the Vamprye (1979) is another great shot at the Dracula story, this time by Werner Herzog, and starring the mad, bad, and dangerous-to-know Klaus Kinski.

If the living dead are more appealing than their blood-sucking cousins, gorge yourself on all three key George Romero classics: The Night Of The Living Dead (1968), Dawn Of The Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985). And just for good measure, you can enjoy Romero’s own vampire movie, Martin (1976), too.

70s and 80s horror gems

God Told Me To (1976) is a little-known genre gem from schlock-meister Larry Cohen, who also directed The Stuff (1985), a tongue-in-cheek and entertaining critique of consumerism, dressed up as a horror movie.

Sleepaway Camp (1984) is actually one of the most effective and original teens-in-trouble slashers, and for those of you with a very short attention span Trilogy Of Terror (1975) contains three short shockers in one neat little movie.

Spielberg’s very early Duel (1971) about a never-seen malevolent truck driver is possibly better-described as a chase movie than a horror movie.

Meanwhile, down under and way out in the outback, Peter Weir’s The Long Weekend (1978) is a savage look at what can happen to nasty yuppies who don’t respect nature.

The Antichrist – and worse

A little silly, perhaps, but The Omen (1976) is a classic with a great cast, all trying to battle the advent of the Antichrist. More low-key, but quietly creepy, is Horror Hotel (1960) starring the ever-suave Christopher Lee, in a tale of satanic witchcraft.

Witches are also the subject of a very different movie, Inferno (1980) by Italian horror genius Dario Argento. The Evil (1978) is a far less artful but still enjoyable hellhouse romp.

A far more serious and intriguing movie, Triangle (2009) is a film that plays with your expectations in a big way. There’s also much more to the all-to-realistic Kill List (2011) than initially meets the eye. A little slow for some, too brutal for others, it’s one of my personal favorites.

Way out westerns

The western may be a neglected genre in Hollywood right now, but several classics and obscure movies survive on YouTube, including the classy spaghetti shoot-up A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and its sequel For a Few Dollars More (1965), both starring a youthful Clint Eastwood. The nastily enjoyable Django (1966) – so much better than the Tarantino travesty – is also available, as are most of its rather substandard sequels.

Comedy central

So far the list is a little light on comedy. To help remedy that oversight, I can thoroughly recommend Kung Fury (2015), a wondrous mash-up of 80s action and sci-fi movies all served up in little over half an hour. Just take a look at Conan the Barbarian (1982) for a reminder of how movies used to be in that decade – when they got it right.

And where would we be without the comedic genius of Monty Python? The controversial and brilliant religious satire Life of Brian (1979) and medieval gag-a-minute Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) are both classics from the famous comedy troupe. Another movie that gets a lot of acerbic sniggers from a serious source is Dogma (1999).

The best of the worst

Although made with serious intentions, the following movies might also make you laugh out loud, too – but for all the wrong reasons.

The king of bad movies has to be Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). Ed Wood’s low-budget tour de force about an alien invasion that uses zombies as a secret weapon (as they fly around in paper plate UFOs) is widely acknowledged as the worst of the worst.

If bad is your bag, you should also check out the very strange Glen or Glenda (1953), Wood’s surprising take on transsexuality, based vaguely on his own life as a crossdresser.

Bringing us up-to-date in the god-awfulness stakes is The Room (2003), a movie celebrated for its dreadfulness, now receiving more attention thanks to The Disaster Artist (2017), which dramatizes the incredible story of how it was made.

Lots more to discover

We’ve gathered together the good, the bad (but never the indifferent) for your viewing pleasure, and we hope you enjoy this as much as we enjoyed compiling this list. Once you’ve seen these 40, come back and see what else we’ve unearthed online!