Google+ is making a big push to be where you store your photos, and it’s got some pretty nice new features to make its case. Storage, editing, and even automatic curation, this actually sounds pretty great.
First, there’s storage. It’s upped your max to 15GB storage (from 5GB) for your full size photos on Google+. You still get infinite storage for standard size, but full size is especially awesome with the big resolutions cameras (even on phones) shoot in now.
It’s also got a new feature that picks out best photos out of hundreds you took on a vacation. It measures whether a photo is blurry, a duplicate, has bad exposure, landmarks, if people are in the frame, whether Google thinks you actually like those people, and, this one is kind of incredible, aesthetics based on computers who know what looks good, and what doesn’t.
It’s also got a new “auto enhance” photo feature. It softens skin automatically, without selecting areas, to get rid of wrinkles. It can also automatically reduce noise, add structure, or fix your exposure, for every single photo you upload, on its own. You can turn it on or off for any individual photo, too. Who knows if this stuff is actually going to work like this in real life (we’d guess, not quite, but maybe?), but these are some pretty impressive claims, if only because it’s all automatic.
It also does “auto-awesome” motion, which basically turns sequential photos into animated GIFs (or probably another format). It will also automatically create an HDR image (two different exposures), or auto-composite two photos with different people smiling into one composite, or create automatic collages or panoramas. Basically, shoot like you’re going to edit stuff later, upload it, and Google will recognize what you wanted to do and do it for you.
