If it’s going to compete with Facebook in any real way, Google+ has to do things Facebook doesn’t.
I prefer Facebook because of its richer engagement experience. The thing that Facebook does that I like least is over-compress my photos.
Google+ may be recognizing an opportunity. It is popular with professional photographers like Trey Ratcliff and Thomas Hawk. Trey dropped the news about Google+ giving users the option of saving full-sized photos.
Google+ previously limited photo size to a maximum width or height of 2,048 pixels. Now there is a setting to turn that limit off.
To do that, go to settings in Google+ and click Google+ from the left menu. Scroll almost all the way down until you get to the Photos section where you’ll see a check box that says, “Upload my photos at full size.”
It’s not all all a bag of happy chips sprinkled with bacon bits, though. There is a catch. You have to use your Google Drive storage account. That only gives you 5GB of free storage.
If you’re going to upload full-size, high-quality photos, you can use up 5GBs quick. To add more Google makes you pay.
It’s 25GB for $2.49 a month and 100GB for $4.99 a month. Google Drive plans top out at a whopping $799.99 a month for 16TB of storage.
Allowing full-size, uncompressed photos is a nice way for Google Plus to get ahead of Facebook for photo sharing, but Google Plus isn’t hurting for profits. Charging photographers to share their work on Google+ does more for Google+ than for photographers. I’m sticking with SmugMug for sharing my art uncompressed.
Photo Credit: Trey Ratcliff – Stuck In Customs
Google+ just isn't making it… I'm just not sure it'll ever catch on. Good concept though.
I agree, I'm not sure that Google+ is a good fit for most people; being able to have full sized pictures would be great, but the fee, as well as such a smaller demographic that really desires that for a price, a little out there to me.
Interesting concept
I'm starting to think I should use Google+ more often over Facebook… I like that it is so easy to share things with specific people – a lot easier than Facebook. And I think we retain the rights to our own photos, which is not the case with Facebook I think?
I personally don't use it that much.