Google Photos gets $6.99/month auto ‘premium print series’ and Walgreens printing

Abner Li | Oct 20 2020 - 9:00 am PT

At the start of this year, we reported that Google Photos was trialing a subscription where your best pictures get automatically printed monthly. The premium print series is now official and rolling out soon, while Google Photos is also expanding its other physical offerings.

The “premium print series” sees Google Photos use machine learning to select 10 of your top monthly images. You can edit both the selection and each picture beforehand. Additional customization options include the finish (matte or glossy) and the border.

Google imagines this service as offering as a way to “decorate your home with important memories, create a scrapbook or share with a loved one.”

You can even turn your photos into postcards, perfect for mailing a memory to a loved one you haven’t seen in a while. And these prints are made with cardstock paper, so they’re built to last.

This subscription costs $6.99 per month (including shipping, but not taxes) and users can easily skip a month. Certainly a novelty, this is quite fun and reflects how images today often don’t leave the digital realm. The automatic nature every month might change that, while it serves as another showcase of the Google Photos AI. It will start rolling out later this month and be fully available in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, same-day 4×6, 5×7, and 8×10 printing can now be sent to Walgreens. Joining CVS and Walmart, Google says this “nearly doubles the total number of stores available.”

Rounding out today’s developments are photos books with up to 140 pages. By default, 20 pages are included in the $9.99 (7-inch softcover) and $19.99 (9-inch hardcover), with each extra page costing $.35 or $.65.