Google Photos Gets a New Feature Just in Time for the Holidays

— -- It's the holiday season so that likely means you'll be snapping and posing for plenty of photos.

Google Photos, the super smart app designed for storing and organizing photographs, is now making it easier for friends and family to share those memories in collaborative photo albums.

The update is being added today for iOS, Android and Web users, Google said.

The collaborative process is simple and all users need is a Google account. With Google Photos, users simply set an album to collaborative and then share with friends and family who will be prompted to join the album. When they do, the original creator will get a notification and the new collaborators will be free to add new photos and videos.

From then on, everyone who is a member of the album will receive alerts when new items have been added. It's the perfect way to share photos with a select group -- without necessarily putting them on social media for everyone to see.

Announced earlier this year, Google Photos excels at helping users store and easily manage their collection of photos, essentially tidying up what would otherwise be an unwieldy collection of images.

One of the most welcome features of Google Photos is all of the space the auto-upload feature clears up on a smartphone. Using Google's search algorithm, users can search for words in their photos like "dog" or "graduation." Even if they don't have descriptions, Google Photos will instantly show auto-grouped images, making it easier to find the photo you want to see. Similar to the way Facebook and other photo programs can recognize a person's face, Google's product can even recognize the age progression of the same person.