Where and how and why are my photos?
November 19, 2017 8:40 AM Subscribe
I migrated my photos from Apple Photos to Google Photos and hate it. I can't migrate back, so now my photos are in multiple places. All I want is 1) all my photos in one place where 2) I can share to Facebook and 3) I can upload to Shutterfly. My next step is to hire a teenager, but I am hoping I don't have to.
1. In 2016 I switched from an iPhone to an Android, after many many years entirely in the Apple ecosystem. I moved 10+ years of photos over to Google Photos.
2. I then learned that you can't share photos (only links to photos) from GPhotos to facebook. And that it won't play with Shutterfly at all.
3. Now I have an iPhone again, and I am trying to migrate my photos back to APhotos. My import failed with 10,000+ "Can't get metadata" errors. After some playing around with it, I have determined that I could import my photos ONE BY ONE, but with more than 10,000, that just isn't possible.
4. So I have 2003-2016 photos on Gphotos, and late 2016-2017 photos on Aphotos. This is a problem for me.
Am I understanding something wrong? Is Gphotos more useful than I am finding it to be? Can I get my photos to Aphotos somehow? Is there a Third Option (as in, should I buy some software and dump it all in there?) I am completely incapable of fixing this on my own.
1. In 2016 I switched from an iPhone to an Android, after many many years entirely in the Apple ecosystem. I moved 10+ years of photos over to Google Photos.
2. I then learned that you can't share photos (only links to photos) from GPhotos to facebook. And that it won't play with Shutterfly at all.
3. Now I have an iPhone again, and I am trying to migrate my photos back to APhotos. My import failed with 10,000+ "Can't get metadata" errors. After some playing around with it, I have determined that I could import my photos ONE BY ONE, but with more than 10,000, that just isn't possible.
4. So I have 2003-2016 photos on Gphotos, and late 2016-2017 photos on Aphotos. This is a problem for me.
Am I understanding something wrong? Is Gphotos more useful than I am finding it to be? Can I get my photos to Aphotos somehow? Is there a Third Option (as in, should I buy some software and dump it all in there?) I am completely incapable of fixing this on my own.
You can download all your Google photos using Google Takeout. Select Google Photos >All Albums. It creates a compressed archive file which you can download. You can have Google break up the downloaded files so that each one isn't huge but is instead a series of smaller files. Metadata is included. Uncompress the archive and import the folders into Photos
posted by Zedcaster at 10:21 AM on November 19, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Zedcaster at 10:21 AM on November 19, 2017 [2 favorites]
Shutterfly can import photos directly from Google Photos. Their help articles seem out of date and talk about Picassa but I just logged into Shutterfly and the photo source options are Facebook, Instagram, Flickr and Google Photos.
posted by GuyZero at 12:28 PM on November 19, 2017
posted by GuyZero at 12:28 PM on November 19, 2017
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1. Open Google drive in a web browser
2. Use the settings to turn on "Show photos in Google Drive"
3. The "Google Photos" folder should appear, right click on it and select "Download"
4. Wait for the download to finish
5. Login to iCloud on a web browser and go to Photos
6. Use the Photos "import" button and then point it at the folder that you downloaded in step 3. It should be in the "Downloads" directory. Depending on the computer you may need to unzip it. Normally by double clicking.
7. Wait for the upload to finish
I upload all my photos to both Google and Apple so that I don't have to do the above when I change phones or whatever.
posted by pdoege at 10:20 AM on November 19, 2017