#TechTipTuesday - Digital Clutter Clean up part 4 Google Photos

Ok, we have come a long way to cleaning up our digital clutter, now it is time to dive into the thick of it. 

Our Photos....

Lucky for us, Google Photos ( another terrific tool to use to back up all of your photos) will give us unlimited space for us to store our photos. However we do have to set them to upload as High quality vs the original quality. While this sounds daunting and frustrating, remember the photo's we are taking with our phones these day are SUPER hi-res and if we are just using Google Photos as a secondary backup method, then it will be ok. 

Honestly the quality of the photos is nearly indistinguishable to the untrained eye. So, let's go in and make sure all of our the photo's and videos we have uploaded over the past many many months...or even years, are in the format that Google will give us unlimited storage on.

In order to check and see how much of the storage space you are using up and where it is being consumed head on over to Google drive on a computer and scroll down a little ways. On the left hand side and click "upgrade storage". Then Google will give you the run down of your usage.

If you are using GB worth of space within Photo's and need to downsize you can navigate over to photos.google.com/settings

 It will then show you how much storage space you have.

(You also have the option to Buy storage, but this post is about cleaning up the digital clutter, not how to increase your capacity for it!)

When you choose "Recover Storage"

It will show you how much space you can recover.

When you are ready press the compress option.

 You will then of course be told that this process can not be undone before it goes through. 
When you are ready, press Compress, for the second time. 

Now, this process can take up to an hour but it is well worth it. It will even go through and compress items uploaded in other Google services like Google+, blogger, Picasa and web albums.


Trust me it is all worth it in the end. 
You will have increased your digital storage, made your inbox lighter, and can now rest easy. 

You've successfully cleaned out and made more space for future clutter. This time, you now have the tools to clean house when the time comes again.