Google+ Update for iOS Brings Great Photo Features to Edit, Enhance, and Share

On Tuesday, Google released a new version of its Google+ mobile app for iOS, bringing Apple fans up to speed with Android users, who have had some of these features for about a week now. The newest incarnation of the app, version 4.4.0, is Google's 43^rd update for their social networking application. Here's what the new Google+ will look like and feature on your iPhone.

The biggest change to the Google+ mobile platform is improvements to photography. As Facebook leads the way with mobile photo display — like full screen photos in the new Facebook Home — and mobile photo creation, with Instagram, Google+ is upping its photo-related nuts and bolts, like picture management and display, photo enhancement, and sharing.

Storage and Sortage

Now, Google+ will gather your camera photos and store them on Google's servers (privately, until you authorize sharing) with Auto Backup. This is a good idea if you want to make sure you don't lose a particular photo if you lose the phone, just make sure you manage those privacy settings.

Once you've backed up your photos, you can sort through them using the Highlight feature, and the best looking photos in your camera roll are put front and center. If you don't believe a photo is a "Highlight," you can always remove it using "Hide from Highlights" inside the Highlights tab.

Photo Enhancement

Also, you can make your photos highlight-worthy by using the Google+'s auto enhance feature. "Auto Awesome" can make HDR photos - which takes multiple exposures of the same image and merging them together for better range of shadows of light - all you have to do is upload more than three similar images and Auto Awesome does the rest. It also does similar image-stitching with fast-burst photos. You need to have at least 5 of those in a row, but then Auto Awesome will stitch them into a "repeating short animation," which is Google talk for a GIF. Similar merging is available to make a "best" composite photo of people in your camera roll and to create panoramic images. 

Other Changes and Features

Google+ has removed Hangouts from its Google+ app and made it a standalone that does messaging and video calls. You can get it here for iOS and here for Android. On the business end of Google+'s new app, posts from Google Offers now appear in users' streams and are interactive. Speaking of interactivity, you can now browse and discover content on your iPhone, or iPad using hashtags. And you can control how often "What's Hot" posts appear in your stream.

There are a few minor changes that on-the-go Google+ users will probably find useful. Google has expanded what you can edit on your Google+ profile, and you can now upload a cover photo right from your mobile device. Other smaller changes include the ability to edit comments, the ability to copy a post's permalink, and support for strikethrough text.

This new app won't turn Google+ into the next Facebook/Instagram, but it sure looks like it will be helping people handle their images in a better, more feature-rich way.

(iTunes Store via Apple Insider)