Google Photos continues to win hearts among consumers. One of the main reasons for the surprising popularity of Google Photos is the smooth sharing with the partner account and the social sharing. Over the years, the company also introduced robust photo and video editing tools to make changes to the media without leaving the app. Read on for the top six tricks for editing videos on Google Photos.
If you want the best editing experience in Google Photos, we recommend that you opt for the Google One subscription. Google already has some editions photo editing functions reserved exclusively for Google One users. It will not surprise us that the company also do the same with the video.
With that on our way, let’s start editing some videos on Google Photos, shall we?
Table of Contents
1. Stabilize videos
This is more relevant for phones without OIS (Optical Image Stabilization). If your phone lacks OIS hardware, you may end up with shaky video output.
Google Photos has a neat stabilizer that brings much-needed smoothness to your shaky video. Here’s how to use it.
Step 1: Open Google Photos on your phone.
Step 2: Select a video you want to edit.
Step 3: If it is available on your device storage, you will see the video immediately. Otherwise, Google Photos will download the video to the device.
Step 4: Tap the Edit button at the bottom.
Step 5: Take a look at the current video and tap the Stabilizer icon next to it.
Step 6: Let Google Photos run a stabilizer and make any necessary changes.
The ETA to apply a stabilizer will depend on the length of the video. Check the output and if you are satisfied with the results, tap Save Copy at the bottom.
2. Export a frame from a video
Do you want to capture that perfect moment of the video as an image? Look no further and use the Google Photos video editor to export a frame from the video.
Step 1: Open Google Photos and select a video to open the edit menu.
Step 2: Play a video in the editor and press Pause to export the image.
Step 3: Tap Export Frame and Google Photos will export it to the Camera folder on the phone.
3. Play with cropping tools
Similar to the Google Photos image editor, the software has the same cropping tools for videos.
From the Google Photos video editor, select Crop and the app will let you make automatic adjustments, rotate a video if you want, play with various aspect ratios, and more.
You have all the relevant cropping tools to make changes to the video.
4. Adjust video profiles
This is very useful for making some last minute changes to Google Photos videos.
Open the Google Photos video editor menu and select Adjust. The Adjust menu opens a number of editing functions for a video in Google Photos. For example, you can play with Brightness, Contrast, White points, Highlights, Shadows, Black points, Saturation, Warmth, Tint, Skin tone, and Blue tone.
You can also use the Vignette option and give your video a classic film reel effect. However, we mainly use the Saturation tool and set the saturation high to achieve an eye-catching effect on the video.
5. Apply filters to videos
This is our favorite video editing tool and one of the most used to date. In the Google Photos video editing menu, select Filters and play with various filters to make drastic changes to the video.
You can choose Vivid, West, Palma, Metro, Blush and even apply the Black and White effect which gives a retro look to the video.
If you want to edit the video further after applying a filter, you can go back to the Adjust menu and make any necessary changes.
For example, users can apply Vivid mode to video and then raise or lower the hue of saturation from the Adjust menu.
6. Marking tool
This is most relevant for educational or informational videos. You can use the Pencil or Highlighter tool and apply basic squiggles to the video.
In most cases, you will end up using the Pen tool. Just click Markup and select Pencil.
Select your preferred color and do some squiggles on the video. Unfortunately, the writing or highlights are applied throughout the video and not to a single frame.
Create amazing videos on Google Photos
We can’t say that you can edit a video on Google Photos like a pro. It’s by no means a full desktop video editor, and that’s fine. Google isn’t targeting those users anyway.
Today’s video editing tools are intended for normal consumers. And the added functions should be more than enough. It will be interesting to see how Google further improves the video editing experience in Google Photos for Android and iPhone.