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Android users can now use conversational editing in Google Photos
- HumblyTossed 1y agoI first read that as controversial editing. I'm not sure I was wrong.
- plorg 1y agoMeanwhile they nuked a bunch of actually useful conventional and device-local editing functionality in the same app.
- xnx 1y agoOh no. What did they remove?
- plorg 1y agoThe biggest function I'm missing is the keystone transformation, but magic eraser is now a cloud-only function that is much worse, they have rearranged the controls so in a way that separated some of the color corrections, and the resize edit handles for the functions that are still available are now rounded in a way that makes it much less clear what you are doing.
- nick49488171 1y agoThe crop interface got way worse in the latest update (the "comic sans" update) as well.
- elcapitan 1y agoWhat's the comic sans update?
- plorg 1y agoI think it's Android 16 QPR1 (the September update), it changed the font on a bunch of UI text to something rounded and perhaps cartoonish.
- nick49488171 1y agoThe latest android update where they made all the fonts cartoony, added weird decorations to the volume slider, and messed with the camera edit menus.
- elcapitan 1y agoOh, I had a suspicion that was what you meant, that's a good name for that annoying change.
- plorg 1y agoYeah, I don't understand how that update got pushed by anyone who actually used the product. Like, they broke some of the most used functions.
- ncr100 1y agoMagic Eraser doesn't work correctly anymore, besides it being slower and cloud only. It does not erase A LOT of things it used to.
- netsharc 1y ago- Enhance 34 to 36. - Pan right and pull back. Stop. - Enhance 34 to 46. - Pull back. Wait a minute. Go right. Stop. - Enhance 57-19. - Track 45 left. Stop. - Enhance 15 to 23. - Give me a hard copy right there.
- svachalek 1y agoWe'll really be in the future when this feature allows looking around corners like in the movie.
- Legend2440 1y agoYou can already do that with some of the other AI generators. Whatever you see around the corner is all hallucinated of course.
- DaiPlusPlus 1y agoReal-life Enemy of the State, but in the worst possible way.
- NickNameNick 1y agoRed Dwarf did it better.
- gyomu 1y ago(this is from the original Blade Runner, for anyone wondering) I love this being quoted here because while it superficially seems that this interaction is interacting with an AI in a conversational way, it shows tool use that is at the opposite end of what interacting with modern AI tends to be like/what AI marketing wants it to be. In this scene: - the user is guiding the tool step by step to a desired outcome, rather than giving a broad vague result that the tool gets to arbitrarily - the user knows intimately the specific technical capabilities of the tool - every command is phrased to be unambiguous and lead to a deterministic result Imagine if instead all of the above, Deckard just gave a broad request, eg “can you help me find who the killer is by analyzing this picture”?
- jajuuka 1y agoI was just thinking something like this would be nice. I wanted to remove a shadow from a picture but lasso tools weren't picking it up. After some Googling found a tool in Samsung Gallery to do it. It still tried to steer me towards generative edits instead though. But just telling it "remove the shadow from this image" would be great.
- SketchySeaBeast 1y agoEnhance. Enhance. Enhance. Honestly surprised to see such a quick turn around on what was a Pixel 10 exclusive feature. I guess they did that for Circle to Search too.
- xnx 1y agoGlad to see that these features aren't artificially limited to specific hardware, often under the pretense that some advanced "AI chip" is necessary.
- SketchySeaBeast 1y agoGoogle certainly has to walk a fine line here because it's not like the hardware they are selling is compelling by itself.
- xnx 1y agoTrue. Being "stock" (free of unremovable spyware/crapware) and getting OS updates are the primary benefits of Pixel devices for me.
- SketchySeaBeast 1y agoI'm on a Pixel right now as well and, just like you say, it's the software experience that sells it. Enough to justify my next phone also being a Pixel? Jury is still out on that.
- acka 1y agoThese features are limited to a specific demographic (those who are 18+ and live in the US) and are 'eligible' (whatever that means) though.
- barbazoo 1y agoNot affiliated, but Immich (https://immich.app/ https://immich.app/) is a great self-hosted alternative to Google Photos.
- prabakarviji 1y agoInteresting. any alternative options for iCloud Photos?
- JaggedJax 1y agoNot affiliated, but Immich (https://immich.app/ https://immich.app/) is a great self-hosted alternative to iCloud Photos.
- TranquilMarmot 1y agoYou can import your iCloud photos into Immich. Immich itself is agnostic to the photos and mostly just operates on folders of files. https://github.com/simulot/immich-go https://github.com/simulot/immich-go is what I used to import ~300gb of photos from Google Photos to Immich. Not sure how well it works for iCloud. There is also https://ente.io/ https://ente.io/ which is a private & secure photo backup app that you don't need to self-host.
- CharlesW 1y ago> Not sure how well it works for iCloud. iCloud Photos stores originals (assuming you're using "Download Originals to this Mac") in the "originals" folder of your .photoslibrary package. If you don't sync your originals, use iCloud Photos Downloader (https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_downloader https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...) to get them.
- 47282847 1y agoI use PhotoSync to transfer files automatically. There is also icloudpd and other tools to grab them from iCloud but it requires Advanced Data Protection off.
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- PStamatiou 1y agoWhat is happening on the Photos team? I know a lot of the core team has left already, but lately it really seems like they are cramming in AI functionality in a way that does not consider the whole experience and it truly feels bolted-on. First they tried to mess with regular search and had to leave in a setting for people to go out of their way to disable it. Google Photos used to be one of my most favorite apps. Now it's some testing playground. I'm sure some new startup is approaching this area so the cycle can repeat.
- jsheard 1y ago> lately it really seems like they are cramming in AI functionality in a way that does not consider the whole experience and it truly feels bolted-on. "They" could be just about any major software vendor as of late, it's hardly specific to Google.
- jama211 1y agoApple is avoiding it more somewhat, but perhaps more due to being behind on the tech itself
- rurp 1y agoFor real, even Lowes is doing this crap. I tried looking up a some products on their website with my phone the other day and every product page is now partially obscured by a useless AI widget that can't be removed. They've made their product categorically worse just to check the AI box.
- mrbonner 1y agoImagine one day that Tesla will only allow you to control your car with voice commands. It would be hilarious. Is conversation UX suitable for everything? I think not. Turn left, no other left, no the left after that left. No, damn it stop the car. /s
- jezzamon 1y agoConversational via text, not via voice
- DaiPlusPlus 1y ago...but why not by voice? "Vibe editing" images by voice doesn't offend my 20+ years of developing Photoshop skills the way that typing-out an imagined conversation between MacGyver and a 1980s image-editing-computer does. Oddly, I can't explain why either. ---- What I dislike the most about "prompts" being the default input for AI models thesedays is the inability to "browse" its featureset to see what it's actually capable of. I don't want to spend minutes/hours throwing different natural-language commands at it to seeing if it understands chroma-keying from chromatic-aberration - or if it can do lossless JPEG block-level transformations. It's when something stops being a useful tool but a hinderance or even a toy (perhaps even with Achievements and microtransaction unlockables).
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- fulafel 1y agoDoes this require associating your phone with a G account?
- jjice 1y agoI believe so. I'd imagine the image has to be uploaded to Google Photos as well, since most of their nice features like personal tagging require that. Part of the reason I switched to an iPhone was for all the on device stuff that Google insists you use the cloud for.
- scottyah 1y agoSame, the google phones just absolutely hated that I went into airplane mode frequently but still wanted to do things like listen to music, view and edit notes, etc. God forbid I try to add to my shopping list while camping.
- tucnak 1y agoOne compromise in GrapheneOS is to use Storage Scopes to limit the scope of Google Photos to select folders, or potentially even disable Network permissions for it altogether. I use Google Photos for sharing photos with my partner and family, and I can do this by moving photos around on disk so that they enter the scope. The camera app from Google is great, and so is the keyboard: neither gets Network permission on my phone.
- ktosobcy 1y agoUhm... I'm probably "consevative" but if I take a photo I want to have a photo of the moment and not "a variation of the moment"... o_O
- bahmboo 1y agoThe original is always kept and is easy to see
- lxgr 1y agoHave you never taken a time-sensitive photo that was otherwise perfect but has an annoying visual obstruction (e.g. traffic sign poles, a reflection on a windshield for photos taken out of a moving car etc.)?
- ipaddr 1y agoNo because it captures the moment.
- IncreasePosts 1y agoHow exactly does it capture the moment? Almost certainly, the camera doesn't capture what your eyes do, even without advanced computational photography because of lens effects, color range, etc...so what moment is being captured? The moment of the camera?
- npteljes 1y agoPeople don't just use cameras as perfect recording tools, as wild as that sounds. Photos are also for expression. And so, editing can be used to enhance the expression part, getting the image away from the recording parts maybe, but closer to the original intention of taking that photo.
- ktosobcy 1y agoNo, not relly. If there is a traffic sign post then removing it makes it kinda... "untrue"?
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- chankstein38 1y agoYeah, I'm alright. They're really desperately trying to find something that gets people excited about all the AI garbage they're shoveling at us. It's sad. Maybe find something that actually solves a problem instead of just sunk-cost-fallacying LLM crap.
- estimator7292 1y agoThe "AI boom" is really just "sunk cost fallacy At Scale" it's incredible
- allisdust 1y agoAs usual the comments here are very negative on anything and everything AI. This will definitely have appeal for normal users outside of HN bubble. This is also why Google is in a unique position to be able to really capitalize on AI: they already have users that they can ship to vs the next YC startup being able to hit critical mass.
- init2null 1y agoIf you want to try well-engineered neural network use, you should be trying Adobe's products. They have integrated these features with far more tact and actual benefit than I would've expected from them. Google is embarrassing themselves by stuffing AI in places it doesn't fit, and Microsoft is worse.
- apwell23 1y agometa is the worst offender
- cshores 1y agoYou're joking right? Google is integrating photo editing features that can exist at the point of inception. It doesn't get more integrated or fit better than that.
- init2null 1y agoBut it shouldn't have been conceived with that design. Adobe products blend a timesaving tool into a truly productive workflow. Photoshop, a layer or a filter. Lightroom, a brush. Mystery-meat autocorrect/enhance buttons only get you so far and may alter far more than you want, which is dangerous when you want to want to present a slightly polished version of reality.
- the_gipsy 1y agoJust yesterday I wanted to simply take the first frame of one of those stupid "motion" photos (that someone else took, but could have happened to me given the weekly UI churn). I tried really hard, but it's just not possible. What I did find was many, many different buttons and icons that start some kind of AI magic enhancement crap.
- renewiltord 1y agoOkay that's a cool feature. This is a good place to use this technology. It is interesting, though, that Google's products have suffered so much regression as AI has advanced. In the past I could search my images with "Subaru" and reliably get photos. Now it's clearly a subset. Same with Google's voice assistant which was actually more capable 5 or 6 years ago. I get it. It's probably easier to maintain with a general purpose LLM or diffusion model behind the scenes or whatever. It's just a pity that the PMs and engineers who made the good stuff have either lost their positions or have changed their minds.
- ncr100 1y agoEnshittification comes to Google Photos. It's terrible now.
- MaxPock 1y agoSo many companies just about to find out that their apps were features not products.
- gwbas1c 1y agoToday on Gemini one of their suggested activities is to upload a selfie and have it make you look '80s. I uploaded a selfie with a kinda-sorta '80s haircut and it completely changed my gender.
- andybak 1y ago"in the US" FFS...
- hereme888 1y agoIdk who talks to a phone out loud in order to edit a picture. Was there a market asking for this function?
- jawns 1y agoOne of the reasons why I think Google Photos is pushing out this functionality is that these new AI-generated variations count toward your overall storage. So hey, you take a selfie, 3 MB. And now you want your selfie to show yourself posing in front of the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Great Wall of China, and the Grand Canyon. OK, now you've added an additional 12 MB. Do that often enough, and you'll have to buy another block of Google One storage, which is MRR for Google.
- speedgoose 1y agoSure, the company of the "I don’t know how to count that low" meme cares about 12MB.
- ethmarks 1y agoOf course they don't. But if even a small percentage of their userbase uses this on even a small percentage of their photos, that amounts to a massive amount of storage. It doesn't cost Google very much to store all those images, but those users will have to pay for more storage. Even thought it isn't significant to Google when a single person does it, it becomes highly significant when millions of people do it.
- thorncorona 1y agoThis line of reasoning doesn’t make sense because 3MB is marginal for the amount of work put in to develop this feature. Google photos offers a save as copy / save as original feature when editing photos and videos. Removing the save as original button would be cheaper and significantly more effective.
- rlpb 1y agoA million people adding 12MB each would be 12TB in increased storage sales. Is that really significant in increased profit if you set it off against the cost of providing the storage, the computational cost of generating 12TB of images, plus the salaries of the developers to write and then maintain this feature? I think it's more likely that they're doing it because they think it makes their product better, increasing sales that way instead.
- sylens 1y agoGlad to see Ente getting some love here. Immich gets a lot of the attention, but Ente also allows you to self host as an exit ramp if their pricing/antics ever get out of hand.
- NGRhodes 1y agoI look forward to trying: Enhance 224 to 176. Enhance. Stop. Move in. Stop. Pull out, track right. Stop. Center and Pull back. Stop. Track 45 right. Stop. Center and stop. Enhance 34 to 36. Pan right and Pull back. Stop. Enhance 34 to 46. Pull back. Wait a minute. Go right. Stop. Enhance 57 to 19. Track 45 left. Stop. Enhance 15 to 23. Gimme a hard copy right there.
- bertman 1y agoReference: https://youtu.be/hHwjceFcF2Q https://youtu.be/hHwjceFcF2Q (Blade Runner scene)
- factsaresacred 1y agoStill no way to sync the "favorites" album between the default Android Photos app and Google Photos, yet they're busy building this slop. Not to mention the dark patterns that attempt to trick you into backing up your entire photo library, over and over again. Or the inability to exclude folders from the backup process. Maybe get the basic expectations of a Photo app right before adding features nobody asked for.
- esperent 1y agoHappy Nextcloud Memories user here. It does everything that Google Photos does (the good parts). The Nextcloud server is running on Hetzner, with Wasabi block storage. There's an Android app. I can make albums, edit photos, edit metadata, view RAW files, videos, etc. It can geotag, you can install the separate Recognize app to have a local model recognize faces, which it does quite well. I can also, if I wish, just look at the files.
- ncr100 1y agoCan't edit previously edited photos, now. Terrible update. Frustrating, missing features, slower, fiddly UI that's too small even on pixel Fold. Failure.
- cam_l 1y agoDoes anyone actually like conversational AI? I feel like we are zombie walking into some dystopian future.. 'if life was a text-based adventure game'. So now am i back in a dark room fumbling around for commands. So I have to guess what the secret rules are, and guess what the magic words are, and I don't even know what your program is capable of? ..no, I never made it out of the first room in thgttg.
- sjw987 1y agoI wonder at what point (if not already) Google will start scanning personal photos for generative AI training. It must be a tempting asset base for them. Personally, I've begun moving my photos off of Google in anticipation that this is the next step (or if it's already happening, to prevent more of it). I'm a very private person. The only place online that I keep my personal photos of family, friends and my memories is in Google Photos and I don't trust them not to use these assets for training. I (maybe daftly) trusted this as a sort of private vault for my photos, and don't want my likeness or that of my family, wife, or friends being used to generate AI content.
- Alifatisk 1y agoI have an iPhone, years ago I made a complete switch from having everything on iCloud to Google Photos. I've been very happy so far, except some tiny friction where the Phone does not let me pick a photo from the library directly But new features like these is what scares me, I am afraid the Photos team will do something crazy one day that affects all my photos I do take regular backups every quarter, thanks Google for Takeout, but the fear is still there