Google Photos is one of the most popular photo management and backup tools available for smartphone users. It makes it easy for users to backup, organize, and share their memories with their friends and family. But apart from the backup and image sharing features, Google Photos has amazing edit options too.
The software giant added more editing features for users earlier this year, but some of them have been locked behind a paywall. Here we have brought you a guide on how to edit pictures and images in Google Photos and what extra features are offered to Google One subscribers.
How to Edit Pictures in Google Photos
You all might know that every Google product requires you an active Google account, and Photos is not an exception to this either. So before beginning the guide on how to edit pictures in Google Photos, let’s first learn how to set-up Google Photos on your phone.
First of all, you need to have the Google Photos app installed on your smartphone. If you’re an Android user then your phone is likely to have the app pre-installed. But if it isn’t installed then you can download it from the Google Play Store. iPhone users can download Google Photos from the Apple App Store. Once the app is installed, login to Google Photos with an active Google account. Next, back up the image or pictures you want to edit using Google Photos. After the backup is complete, you’re ready to start editing your backed-up images.
Now, open the phone you want to edit and tap on the Edit button next to Google Lens at the bottom. See the attached screenshot above to know where to click. You’ll see some AI-powered suggestions like “Enhance,” “Warm,” and “Cool.” With these options, you can alter the color temperature of your picture or set Google’s AI-powered effect. At the bottom, you will see a bar with different sections like Crop, Adjust, Filters, and More. You can use any of them or a combination of them to get the desired look on your photo.
The Crop tab allows you to crop the photo the way you want it, rotate it, or even crop it to a specific shape. With the Adjust tab, you can tweak a lot of features of your image, including Brightness, Contrast, White Point, Highlights, Shadows, Black Points, and more. You can also add tint, warmth, or change skin tone and blue tone. And last, there is a Filters tab that allows you to add various filters to automatically adjust your picture to fit a specific look. These preset effects provided by filters are especially useful for photos to be posted on social media.
Google Photos Features Behind Google One Subscription
Last year, Google announced that it’ll stop providing free unlimited storage to High-Quality backups on Google Photos from June 1st, 2021 onwards. So to make it more appealing to users, Google offers a few perks across its products. But specific to Google Photos is the additional edit options for Google One subscribers. Here’s a list of what Google Photos edit features require Google One subscription:
Suggestions: Dynamic, Color Pop, Vivid, Luminous, Radiant, Ember, Airy, and Afterglow.
Adjust: Blur (free for photos with depth information), Color Focus (free for photos with depth information), Portrait Light, and HDR.
Note that these features require at least Android 8.0 to work, and the device should have at least 3GB of RAM. Further, a lot of these premium features are not available on the Google Photos for iOS app. But all of these editing tools are available for free on Pixel phones even if you don’t have an active Google One subscription.
What is Google One and its Subscription Plans
Google One is a storage management tool and a monthly subscription service linked to your Google account. This storage is shared across all Google products, including Drive, Gmail, and Photos. The subscription plans for Google One start at just $1.99 per month for 100GB of storage. This goes up to 2TB for $9.99 per month. There are also additional storage options like 10TB, 20TB, and 30TB for users who need additional storage. However, most customers don’t even fill up more than a few GBs, and for most users, the free plan is more than enough.
