How to find the URL for a picture in Google Photos

This article describes how to get the URL or internet address of a picture in Google Photos, and the difference between Google's shareable links and URLs.

Google Photos is a tool that help bloggers (and everyone else) to manage their picture collections. It replaces Google+ Photos, and works alongside Picasa-web-albums.   You can read more about it here.

In Google Photos, there are two different types of web-address for a photo.

• One is the URL, and this can be used to refer to pictures from Blogger, or from other tools that want a link that just shows the photo, eg Twitter, Google Maps.  This is the traditional style of internet-address for a photo.

• The other is the shareable link.   This is what Google Photos provides from the Share function.   Shareable links can be used in Facebook, and other places where the photo that is being shared is displayed within a web-display, rather than just as a picture.   (Ref:  How to make and manage shareable links in Google Photos.)

Unfortunately shareable links cannot be used in many applications.  This is because they don't just show the picture.   Instead they load a display showing the picture-date, the name and picture of the person who is logged in to Google at the time, and any other pictures that you have included in the same shareable link.

If you want to use an image from Google Photos in a tool which cannot use shareable links, you need to find it's URL, instead.   At the moment, Google Photos doesn't have a way to get this - but luckily it's easy enough to find.