Google new photo app, a promising new experience separate from Google+, will surely be arriving later or sooner, but now (thanks to Android Police) we have screenshots of the Android version of the app. What makes the new photo app more exciting is its standalone status from Google+.
Separate from Google+
Rumors of a standalone photo service go back to August 2014 when it was said that Google+’s image functions will be detached and made into a standalone photo service. Google senior vice president Sundar Pichai stated in March that the company will lay down more focus on photos. “Photos are a big use case,” Pichai said. “So we are going to say this is the stream now.”
The new standalone app will probably launch on mobile devices (Android, iOS) and on the web at photo.google.com. The new app will also allow users to search photos, create an automatic backup and manage them. There will be an option to view the photos sorted out by month or day and a “comfortable view” that shows the photos by day in a staggered grid.
Google takes care of privacy
Google has added another feature in the new app to allow users to share photos and videos with privacy controls. For such sharing, location metadata and any other link attached to the photo is deleted, thus, making it safe for users to share.
In the new photos app, to share images/video through links, a user will have to select the images and then open the sharing menu. Then go to the “Get Link” option, located towards the top, and upon clicking, it will generate a link. Thereafter, links can be sent as an SMS or posted on Facebook or any other thing they want to do with the photo.
Auto Awesome, a feature released in 2013, will now be known as the Assistant, an app that puts special effects to photos and enhances the viewing experience. Assistant will let users create albums, movies, stories, animations and collages. Other features such as photo organization and face matching will also be present in the new updated interface. The cropping feature will have a new rotation wheel and now can be panned to various aspect ratios. Although there could be changes in the final version with some features exiting or being added, not being attached to Google+ is final.
