Editing videos in/from the cloud is something that most of us haven't really thought of until recently, but upload and download speeds are now so high that short clips and basic edits are now quite possible. Not least in Google Photos, which many of us have used in the past as an all-purpose archiving solution from all platforms because it promised free backup forever. Now, the 'free forever' thing is changing in July because uploads after that are counting against your Google account storage quota, but you still have a couple of months to upload everything from all devices without charge or penalty (other than some re-compression), so get archiving. 

This story is just to highlight that the Google Photos application on iOS and Android just got a major video editing update. See below. For basic changes to a video you've shot, this is now better than ever, whichever device shot the footage. Just don't expect clip combination or true video composition!

Google has been teasing improvements to mobile and cloud video editing for a while and it's now here, I've tested it on my Samsung Galaxy S9+ (below) and iPhone 12 Pro Max. Previously all you could do was stabilise, rotate, and trim videos, but now you have more cropping options, individual frame exports, horizon correction, and audio removal. Plus colour correction options similar to when editing photos, such as brightness, contrast, white point, warmth, tint, skin colour, and vignette. 

Tap on 'Edit' to get started. This video was actually on the test phone, but Google Photos is a service as much as an application and it doesn't actually matter where the video started as long as you have a good connection, i.e. upload to the service from a Windows 10 hybrid and edit things on an Android phone.

Stabilising footage works well (though modern phones tend to shoot stable footage in the first place); (right) some of the cropping options for your video.

Adjusting lighting and colour parameters, of which there are many; (right) trying out some of the dozen or so filters, which can be applied to videos with a tap...

This update is live now in the Android and iOS app stores on-device, so go have a play.