Google Photos is easily one of the best ways to store and organise your best camera shots in the cloud. It's free, smart, and completely cross-platform. Today, the company announced updates coming to the service, which take the cloud photo storage product to a new level.

All the new features are centered around the idea of making sharing better, both within the app and in physical form. 

The first feature, dubbed Suggested Sharing, can automatically detect people in your photos and then offers to share it them with the relevant people. You get a notification on your phone, or you can access the new sharing tab in the mobile Photos app to see the suggestions. 

When you send it to the recipient, they can then choose the images they want and Photos can detect photos in their library from the same event, and then offers them the chance to share them back. That means a shared album with photos from all the people that were there. 

Shared Libraries is the second feature, and is aimed at couples, families and close friends. With this, you can automatically share specific kinds of photo with specific people. For instance, you can set it to have all your photos of your children and/or partner, with your partner. 

With it set up, any time you take a photo of your kids, it appears in a library in your partner's Photos app. They can even set them to appear right in their main photo library stream. 

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Lastly, there's Photo Books. Which is exactly what the name suggests. In the Photos app, you'll be able select if you want a soft or hard cover Photo Book, choose a ton of photos from your collection, then Photos automatically picks out the best and lays them out in the book.

You can make adjustments, then place an order which arrives a few days later. Initially, Photo Books will be US only. 

These features are rolling out on Android and iOS as well as the web over the coming weeks.