Google Photos on the web can now scan and copy the text from your pics

For many users, Google Photos on the web is the way they view, organize and share their pictures and videos. I’m one of those and when it comes to messing with my photos and videos via Google Photos, I find myself in the web portal more often than not. I like the interface, I like the ease of access, and overall I find it to be the easiest way to get things done with my images. Though it tends to lag behind the app version when it comes to new features, the simplicity of navigating to photos.google.com always wins out over loading up the Android version – especially on my Chromebook.

That being said, I do miss some of the nifty features that are available in Google Photos via the Android app. The new video clip editor looks cool and there are some additional photo editing capabilities that the app possesses that I’d love to see migrated over to the web version. With new filters and options for Google One users, the abilities I have in my Google Photos app on my phone make for a more powerful experience versus the web right now when it comes to flexibility and options.

Text scanning is here

Though we still don’t have the above-mentioned video editor or extra photo filters, we are finally seeing one unique feature coming to Photos on the web that has previously never made it out of the mobile app realm up to this point: Google Lens-powered text scanning. That’s right! If you open up an image that has text in it via Google Photos on the web, you’ll be greeted with a pop-up toast notification that – when clicked – will scan the image and deliver all the available text in that image in a sidebar to the right. It works well, it works fast, and it will be an absolute go-to feature of Google Photos for me on a regular basis.

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Once the text is scanned, you can easily highlight what you need, copy and paste it wherever you want. Yes, I know Lens has done this via Android apps for quite some time, but seeing this working on the web, in my browser with no additional plugins or software is sort of magic. It’s the type of addition that is worth noting and hopefully the type of change that indicates the fact that Google is going to continue to invest in Photos on the web more and more as time goes by. One quick note before you try this: it seems to be working its way up from older to new photos in my library. If I go back about 5 months, Google Photos scrapes every photo with text just fine. My newer photos aren’t bringing up the toast notification, though, so your mileage may vary.

SOURCE: 9to5 Google