Google will be soon detaching “Photos” service from Google+ and will make it autonomous. Probably the best and most probably, the most used feature of Google+ is the Photos. Now it is going to gain some freedom, meaning users will not necessarily need a Google+ account to use Photos.
Users can save and share photos even without a Google+ account. However if you do have a Google+ account and prefer to have it integrated with Photos, it should not be a problem. It is believed that Google is detaching Photos service from Google+ as a move to attract more users.
Google is detaching some of its services from Google+. Very recently Google let the Google Apps subscribers to use Hangouts even without a Google+ account. This naturally removes the limits and attracts new users.
Google+ was the first to introduce the auto back up feature of Photos which is a very cool feature indeed. And with the regular updates rolled out to improve Photos and Hangouts, these two services surely have grown much since the launch of Google+. And as I said earlier Photos and Hangouts are naturally the most commonly and most heavily used features in Google+. So they both probably deserve a time of their own 🙂
Coming back to the auto back up feature of Google+ Photos (which is a very appreciated feature, by the way) and the cool photo editing features rolled out by Google recently for its apps, we hope that the independent Photos will also retain its current features as well as improve!