With the newly launched Google Photos application, many people believe that Google is actually doing the same thing that Apple did with the Apple Photos app. How similar are these two apps? Let’s take a look.
Organization
Google Photos and Apple Photos organize the images in your library in a similar way. Apple uses smart groups, based on location and time and calls these groups collections, moments and years. The “moments” collection includes all photos taken during one day or at a certain location, Collection is the group for photos taken over a certain period, but at the same time. And years, as the name suggests, is the group for photos taken during the course of the year. You can also tap on any point of the year group, and you will be taken to a new “collection” group.
Google Photos has a different approach, displaying photos in a way that users can see the date, time and location taken. You can pinch at any time when viewing the days photos, and zoom out to months group. Pinch in to zoom. You can also pinch to zoom out of the month view and get a side bar that will let you scroll to a certain period.
Search
The search engine has always been the strength of Google, and the same applies for the Google photos app. It is a little creepy how well the application works, but it automatically sorts all your photos to categories such as “dogs”, “cars”, “gadgets” and similar categories. You can search the photos by a keyword as well, and you will be surprised by the results. The app also sorts the photos in a folder, so you can check the folder. The Apple Photos search bar, on the other hand, is limited just to date and location.
Storage
Both Apple Photos and Google Photos offer free cloud storage, but the difference is huge. For example, Apple gives users 5 GB free storage in iCloud for their photos. For more storage, users will have to pay. Google, on the other hand, automatically saves all the photos in the cloud, for free. There are limits, as photos are limited to 16-MP resolution and 1080p for videos, but you get it for free. It is possible for the users to upload larger files, but they will be shrunk. All the photos are also compressed. For users of the Google Photos app, there is always the possibility to use Google Drive for larger and standard size files, but you get only 15 GB of free storage.
Editing
Another huge aspect of how the photos app work is the editing options. Aside from the standard auto enhance, Google Photos has several instragram like filters. On the other hand, Apple Photos has a lot more tools to play with. With the Apple Photos app, you can make edits using sliders. Additionally, you can manually adjust shadows, brightness, exposure, contrast, shadows, saturation and much more. As a bonus, Apple also allows the users to edit photos in their Apple Photos app with third party apps.
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