If you are a Google+ fan like myself, you may have gotten a nice email recently in regards to the Auto-Backup feature which is now going to allow full size images and video to be stored. This is great news and honestly it makes life a bit easier for someone who already has issues keeping photos off of their iPhone to make space for new memories of instagram shots (that's what I use it for).
What is Auto-Backup?
Auto-Backup is a feature on the Google+ app (available on iOS and Android) which syncs your entire photo and video albums to your Google+ profile when you connect your device to wifi. Sure, things such as Dropbox and Copy have a feature similar, but neither offer this in a way that seemed user friendly from what I have seen. Others may disagree though.
For someone like myself who is constantly firing off shots with their iPhone and making copies in HDR or holding the button down for a photo sequence, this is perfect. I held back when I got my iPhone 5 and went with the 16g thinking "this is plenty of space, it'll take forever to fill it up." Then, in about a month I was already maxed out. Every 3-4 weeks I end up filling my phone and having to delete or backup to my computer about 700-900 images to free up space. I try to avoid "culling" through them because most of the shots with my iPhone are memories of what I was doing at the time and I like having the shots of weird faces or things in the way because it illustrates what exactly was going on at the time. I shoot a completely different way in comparison to when I have my DSLR in my hands. Having this feature from Google+ makes it nice to know that after I delete photos or video to clear space, I don't have to worry about the memories going away with them.
Sure, the Auto-Backup feature has definitely been around for quite some time for Google+. But, about 9 months ago when I was using it, I was only able to upload the standard size images. Being able to keep the full size makes quite the difference to me since I do print a lot of my images from home to hang up on the walls.
"Full-size Auto Backup uses your Google Drive storage (up to 15GB free). You can always switch back to storing your photos at a standard size (unlimited & free at 2048px) or purchase additional storage."
With privacy being a huge topic in the last few years, you may be thinking about how many people will have access or ability to view these photos. Google allows you to actually set the backup album to private when you create it. "Backups are for your eyes only - you choose if you want to share them."
Google has been doing a lot the last few months/years and bringing a TON of new features to the tech community. When you have sites like Facebook cutting back the organic reach of businesses down to almost 2%-5%, it seems like now is a great time to explore other options such as Google+. What are you thoughts on this Auto-Backup feature and how it is allowing full size images? Have you had a chance to experiment with this feature or maybe another apps feature similar to this already?
If you would like more information about this Google+ feature, please visit their official support page.
[via Google+]
It is also available for windows. I backup all of my photos on my computer to google. Sure it is only 2048px but I have all of them there if something happens.
Awesome, I'll be giving that a try later today.
Huh? Google+ Auto backup has had full size upload of photos and videos ever since the beginning?
Is this one of those "new to iOS" type features?
According to google's emails it is actually specifically "new to android". Earlier in 2013 I was using Auto Backup and it never saved the full size so this is seems new to me (for my iOS) which I just got it going again on. I stopped using it specifically because it wasn't doing full resolution. Not sure how many months it has been live for iOS. I don't have an Android so I didn't want to talk to much about something I couldn't directly have seen how soon it was released. All I know is I received an email announcing it and I definitely wanted to share it with everyone who hasn't had the chance to explore it. Thanks @Frogonastring:disqus
Aye, I've been using auto backup on Android since they first introduced it...it was called something different back then, of course (Instant Upload? I seem to remember) - there's always been an option to do full size backup with the caveat that anything with a long side longer than 2000px counts against your storage, whereas anything below doesn't.
Thanks for sharing it - please don't think I was grouching that it wasn't new! I was just confused (it prompted me to go check my auto backup settings, which was good as they'd introduced a 'new to me' feature on Android whereby you can backup any third-party app image folders, such as VSCO Cam, Vignette, Rando and so on) as I thought it was a pre-existing feature.
Either way, if you use your mobile device to take photos, Auto Backup is awesome even if you don't use Google+ ...lots of free image storage (15GB goes a fair way for mobile images) and you get natty features like Auto Awesome and some robust folder/tagging structure type storage features. It also analyses your photos so you can do things like search for "flower" and similar and it'll give fairly decent results.
I'm a big lover of Google+ and the image storage bits and pieces - it's well worth a look!
I was very pleased to find this site.I wanted to thank you for this great read I definitely enjoying every little bit of it and I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you post.
It doesn't upload videos at full size. The Google+ upload reduces video size.