Hey all! So, if you caught last weeks post, you will know that I am moving to Chrome OS! I did intend to keep Windows as a backup, but I made a mistake and used a 3rd party build of Chromium (open source) which ended up getting rid of Windows. Luckily, I am not too mad since my experience with Chrome OS Flex (official build) has been stellar! I am writing after using it for just under a week and in today’s post, I am going to do some simple edits by using the simple editor built into Chrome OS. Let’s get into it!
What is Google Gallery:
So, Google Gallery is NOT Google photos. It is a simple gallery just like Windows Photos. I was shocked to find out that you can edit a .cr2 raw file from my EOS M. This is a truly unheard of feature, and even though the gallery just has 3 sliders, I wanted to challenge myself to only use these 3 sliders (and some filters) to edit a few photos for today’s post!
So, this is a photo shot in cinestyle flat (in between standard and log).
I was curious and looked… I don’t think it does use the data from the raw file. I am a bit on the fence because it kind of seems like it pulled highlight data, but can’t tell if it was from the flat profile rather than the .cr2 file details. Now, let’s edit some more photos!
Gallery of Mini Edits:
I’ll show some screenshots of my edits and talk a bit about the editing situation that I’ve discovered so far on a new operating system!
Before I continue with talking about editing on chrome os, I found out with this photo that unfortunately there are no straitening tools (strange not to have) but there are filters which I used (as you see in the screenshots!). The filters had to be enabled in *experimental settings* hence why the UI is bugged at bottom. I also can tell that the filters are for sure not pulling from the .cr2 details and treating it like a .JPG but I won’t complain since Windows Photos didn’t have editing support for .cr2 files.
Overall the gallery works as a simple editor in a pretty similar way to Windows 11 Photos. Polarr has a native chrome os app, so I would never have a reason to edit in the gallery. Kind of a bummer that Google didn’t put some Google Photos editing tools or Snapseed tools in here… But, Google Photos does come built in too, it just requires internet which is why I would consider this gallery to be “the main chrome os photo editor”. It would be cool if Google put effort into this, but the only laptop/desktop OS with a remotely good editor is MacOS, so Google really wouldn’t have a reason to focus on it. Just like Windows Photos, it’s been the same for over a decade (mostly), eventually some change will come.
I want to quickly talk about my experience with Chrome OS video/photo editors so far. It is true that you do need a bit of coding to make any editor work, if you want to get a full version of Premiere or Photoshop, you totally can, it just isn’t super straight forward. I do have almost all the coding in to make it work, I just need Google to fix a bug with one type of Linux app. The Linux app support is genius btw, it is still considered “unstable” and a “beta” but works super great with minimal bugs! I have two Linux app stores installed which allow me to easily get apps rather than using code all the time. These Linux app stores are extensive with powerful tools like Gimp, Blender, Shortcut, and another video editor that I’m going to talk about in the future! Anyways, every available app and even “unsupported” apps across the board perform miles better than on Windows. I have been loving Chrome OS Flex so far and am glad to be off Windows. Chrome OS Flex has opened up so many doors that were closed in Windows and I am super excited about it!
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading, I am still recovering from surgery but things are on an up! Be sure to follow for future Photography, Video, Software, and Chrome OS content! See you next week!
-Digital Wonders & Smiles
Digital Wonders and Smiles 