How to Use Google Photos to Organize (AND FIND) Family Pictures

In this post I’m going to share how to use Google Photos Smart Albums to organize and find your family pictures. Especially those of your little one.

I still have a few months before my little one joins the family, but I already know we’re going to be taking TONS of pictures of him. That’s what you do as a parent, right?

How will I organize and share baby pictures?

One of the first things that came to mind was: “how am I going to organize all those pictures?” You don’t have to be too into technology to know the hassle it is to take tons of pictures, whether on your smartphone or dedicated camera, and then find the picture you’re looking for.

It’s happened to you before, right? You’re talking to someone and you bring up a funny moment you know you captured somewhere, but you struggled to find it. You scroll and scroll to where you thought it would be, but eventually the moment passed, you didn’t find the picture and ended up saying “it’s okay, I’ll send it to you later.”

Well, let me show you how Google Photos fixes that problem for me and how it could potentially fix that problem for you!

What is Google Photos?

If you have an Android phone, you might be familiar with Google Photos. It’s the standard photo app for newer Android phones and if you’re an iPhone user, Google Photos is an app that mirrors Apple’s Photos app, but with a few more handy features.

The setup process is pretty easy. You download the Google Photos app on any device, log into your Google account and allow access to your photos. Almost immediately, you’ll be able to backup your photos and videos to your Google account. I wrote a separate blog post on how to set all set up.

Be sure you’re connected to Wi-Fi since the initial sync could take a while depending on how many photos you have stored on your device!

How do Smart Albums work?

Smart albums will make finding your pictures a breeze.

Trust me, this are awesome!

Once your photos are backed up, head to Library at the bottom of the app and click on New album.

Name your album what you’d like and then (this is the cool part) tap the Select People & Pets option.

You should be able to select the face of your cute little one and/or family members.

If you’re making an album for your baby’s pictures, you can tap on their little face.

The Magic of Smart Albums

Now that you’ve created your first smart album, Google will automatically add pictures of the people (or pets) you selected into that album. Moving forward, any new pictures will always be saved in that album.

No more scrolling! If you’re searching for baby pictures, you know your Baby Pictures album will have all of the pictures your little one is in.

Other Awesome Features

If Smart Albums weren’t enough, these are some additional things you can do it Google Photos. The Verge did a great write-up if you’re interested!

• Better search: you can search images by person (or pet), location, selfie vs portrait, and my favorite, searching by what’s in the picture. You can search “beach,” “mountain,” “hiking,” or “cars” and Google will show you those images. Pretty neat.
• Unlimited HD Storage: Google will let you store unlimited photos and videos in HD quality. You do have the option to store the original quality as well, but that counts towards your Google Drive storage. This should be okay for most users but if you like having the high-quality images available, you might have to consider paying for additional storage
• Album Sharing: In addition to creating smart albums, you can also share them with other people. It helps if other users also have the Google Photos app. You can like and comment on pictures within albums. This might be the route we go with when sharing pictures with family and friends.
• Access to Photos via the Web: You have access to your photos everywhere, including the web. Log into your Google Photos account on any device and head to photos.google.com on your device’s web browser to view and download your photos.
• Google Editing Features: You’ll be able to edit pictures within Google Photos as well. Nothing too crazy here, but the neat thing is that the edited version of the photos will show up across all your devices.

Happy Photographing!

At the end of the day, we just want to capture special moments of our little ones. These tips will help you capture AND relive those moments easily.

Thanks for reading!