Google__ The Missing Manual - Kevin Purdy [41]
Viewing Photos
WHEN SOMEONE IN YOUR circles posts a picture and shares it with you, it appears in your stream. But what if you just want to focus on snapshots without all those other, non-photo posts distracting you? As with circles, Google+ includes a page dedicated exclusively to photos. It’s your command center for everything photo related. To hop to your Photos page, click the Photos button near the top of any Google+ page
When you arrive at the Photos page, you’ll see photos that people in your circles have uploaded. Each photo has a little label on the bottom that indicates who uploaded it (“by Joe Smith”), and if people have commented on a particular photo, it has a small speech-bubble icon in its upper-right corner that indicates the number of comments.
You can change which photos you see in the middle of the page by clicking one of the categories on the left side of the screen, below your profile picture:
Photos from your circles. When you first go to your Photos page, Google+ automatically selects this category (you can tell it’s selected here because its name is displayed in red text). When it’s selected, your Photos page displays images labeled with the name of the person who shared that photo, and, if anyone has commented on it, a speech-bubble icon.
Photos from your phone. Click the name of this category to see photos you’ve uploaded from your phone using the Instant Upload feature described on Uploading photos automatically from an Android phone or tablet. (As of this writing, Instant Upload is only available on Android phones.)
Photos of you. Here you’ll see photos that you’ve been tagged in, either by yourself, by people in your circles, or by people outside your circles whose tags you’ve approved. (As Tagging Photos explains, tagging is a way to indicate who’s in a photo.) If you’ve been tagged in a photo with another person, those photos also show up in a subcategory labeled “Photos of you with…”
Photos from your posts. These are the photos you’ve specifically shared with certain people or circles by attaching them to posts or choosing them from among your uploaded albums.
Your albums. This category includes all your photos, even ones you haven’t shared with anyone yet. (In Google+, an album is a batch of photos you upload in one batch.) You’ll also see automatically compiled albums here, like “Photos from posts,” “Photos from Messenger” (see Starting a Messenger Session (Apps Only)), and “Profile photos.”
NOTE
If you’ve used Google’s Picasa Web Albums service before Google+ to upload and organize photos, you’ll see those albums listed on your Google+ Photos page as well.
If you see a photo you’re interested in, click it. If it’s one of your photos, you’ll be taken to a page showing that photo and the other images in the album it came from. Click the photo again and your screen changes drastically: A larger version of the photo appears on a mostly black (or all-black, depending on your browser) background. This distraction-free view is similar to one photographers often use to examine and display their work; Google calls this lightbox view.
Near the upper-right corner of the lightbox view screen is an X you can click to get back to the Photos page. The two translucent arrows on either side of the image let you move through the photos. On the right side of the page is a panel where you see, from top to bottom, the person who posted the photo, any comments that have been made about that photo, and a box where you can add your own comment, if you’d like.
Underneath the photo itself are four buttons (or links, depending on your browser): +1 (which indicates how many others have +1’d this photo, if any), Share, “Tag people,” and Options. If you’re viewing one of your own