In my last post, “It’s All About Placement” I explained how placing a photo inside the text area of an email isn’t always a good idea. I also mentioned that attaching a photo might not get the job done either, because it’s so difficult to tell whether you should trust an email attachment. Instead, I suggested that you might want to use a photo sharing service. In today’s blog post, we’re going to look at one of those services – Google Photos. Over the next week, we’ll look at some other services, as well.

To use Google Photos, you’ll need a Google account. If you already have a Gmail email address, you already have a Google Account. If you don’t have an account, it’s easy to set up and it’s free. Just go to www.google.com, click “Sign In” and then on the next window, click “Create account.”

You can start using Google Photos by clicking on the nine (9) dots which is the Google App menu. You can find this on any Google page once you’re signed in.

Click on the dots and you’ll get a menu similar to this:

Once you find the Photos app icon, just click on it! After the page opens, you’ll see a menu on the left side:

As you can see, there are five options: Photos, Albums, Assistant, Sharing and Photo books.

The category “Photos” is pretty self-explanatory – if you click there, you’ll see all your photos that are in your Google Photos library.

The category “Albums” is a place where your photos are gathered together because of some similarities. Google automatically creates some default albums such as “People & Pets” and “Places.” You can also create your own albums.

The category “Assistant” is a very cool area which automatically creates a ton of possibilities with your photos and it will guide you to create your own movies, animation and more.

The fourth category, “Sharing” isn’t difficult to understand, is it? You can set up a new sharing of certain photos and/or albums. However, in truth, you can share from almost anywhere inside Google Photos.

The last category is “Photo books.” This is the area where you can use your photos to create books and you can order them online to be printed. There’s lots you can do here!

We’re going to explore each of these categories in more depth over the next few posts. As we go along, comment if you have any questions!