OneDrive wants to become the best place to store your photos thanks to these new improvements

"Since before, OneDrive already included certain functions designed for photo management, such as the view all my photos, which shows all the images we have stored, grouped by date and place, regardless of the folder where they are.Now Microsoft wants to take this a step further by making it easier to import and organize photos from multiple places into OneDrive."

Photo import improvements

Coming soon, the OneDrive client in Windows 7 and 8 will allow import photos from cameras, USB drives, and SD cards directly into the cloud(probably in a similar way to how Windows photo import works today).

"The imported photos and videos will be saved in a OneDrive folder called Camera imports, and the screenshots we take on the PC can also be automatically saved in OneDrive, in a folder called Screenshots. "

In the case of photos that we receive in our mail and we want to store, Microsoft reminds us that for a few weeks we can use the new Outlook.com feature to save attachments directly to OneDrive.

Albums, a new way of viewing photo collections

OneDrive Albums are another new feature that allows us to better organize our photos. These are collections where we can add images and videos from various folders, without having to move the elements from their original location.

In addition, the visual appearance of albums is better geared to making photos stand out, with larger thumbnails that scroll with the shape of a collage, and a new photo viewer that by default hides image information, making the image itself stand out.

Like folders, these albums can be shared with friends with just a couple of clicks, and we can even add or remove photos to them after we've already shared them.

Search Improvements

If we finally decide to use OneDrive to store all our photos and files, it is likely that we will end up with a collection of tens of thousands of files in the cloud, which can cause problems when it comes to wanting to find a particular image or document.

Fortunately, and to avoid inconvenience, Microsoft has also improved image search in OneDrive. From now on you can search for photos from the date or place they were taken, or even from text extracted from the images themselves (eg, the transcription of a photo of a sign or a document). Also can be searched from tags, which can be added manually or…

…can be assigned automatically by OneDrive, thanks to a technology developed by Microsoft Research that allows you to classify image content based on its visual appearance.So we can see our images grouped into categories such as sunsets, beach, or blackboards>."

Microsoft claims that the system for assigning tags will be continually improved, so these tags will become more descriptive and more accurate. They also say they are working on new ways to better leverage this information when searching or editing our photos.

And there are also improvements in document search, since from now on it is possible to find PDF and Office files based on the text contained in them .

"Weekend Recap, a summary with our best photos"

Lastly, and in what appears to be an attempt to increase usage of the service by those who already have photo backup turned on, Microsoft is starting to send out a weekly email with a selection of the bestimages we've taken over the weekend, so we can look at them, or share them with friends via OneDrive.

Now available on the web and on iOS, soon on Windows Phone and Android

Cai all the features we mentioned here are already available to everyone on the OneDrive website, and some of them, like the albums or tags, are also available in OneDrive for iOS, thanks to an update that app just received.

According to Microsoft, two updates for OneDrive on Windows Phone and Android should be released in a very short timethat allow these new features to be used.

Via | The OneDrive Blog