Despite the fact we are all taking thousands upon thousands of images with our smartphones everyday, the process of emailing those memories has always been a bit cumbersome. For those of you using Google+ Auto Backup and Gmail consider this problem solved.

Beginning today all of your photos that have been backed up using Google+ will now be accessible using the Insert Photo button in Gmail. This button is now essentially a dedicated icon for photo attachments, labeled very clearly as "Insert Photo".

Along with this nifty little convenience, you can now share entire albums with family and friends and even resize your images right within the body of the email, so the sharing experience is now far more seamless.

The Gmail team will begin rolling these new features out gradually, so be patient if they aren't appearing for you just yet. When you do see them, just make sure that Auto Backup is enabled and that Gmail on the web is utilized.

Earlier today on the Gmail blog product manager Thijs van As quipped:

"Unless you're a budding Ansel Adams, odds are you take most of your photos using your phone. And whether it's photos of your hiking trip or a night out, sending photos to friends and family just got easier. Starting today, you can save time and insert your Auto Backup photos from your phone into Gmail messages on the web using the new Insert Photo button."

Internet search provider Yahoo meanwhile estimates that in 2014, about 880 billion photographs will be taken with smartphones. To put that number in proper perspective, that's 123 photos for every man, woman and child living on this planet, so it's safe to assume there are quite a few of them that will appreciate an easier way to share and email those images.

Digital camera maker Fujifilm goes a bit further and estimates that we'll snap an estimated 1.6 trillion pictures with our smartphones in 2014.

Social media does remain the number one way through which the masses are sharing their memories as it is estimated that everyday over 300 million photos are uploaded to Facebook and an additional 40 million go up on Instagram while Flickr sees approximately 4.5 million.

Needless to say, the new Gmail features will undoubtedly be welcomed by their users and it is probably safe to assume you can expect similar features to become available within competing services very soon.