4 ms·

DO NOT use google photos. it is complete and utter trash. there is no way to download all your photos once they are "backed up" to google. if they called it "

by modzu 7y ago

DO NOT use google photos. it is complete and utter trash. there is no way to download all your photos once they are "backed up" to google. if they called it "transfer to google" that would be fine, but using the terminology "back up" which implies an ability to "restore" is a class-action in the waiting. the app actively deletes the photos from your phone, puts them into their cloud app, and then you are forced to interface with the cloud app to actually do anything with them. i have years of my life "backed up" into google photos and no way to download them to a computer for printing, editing, sorting, etc, except one by one! the only pseudo-official way to get all of them was via drive, and it already fails for large collections (i haven't read why they are discontinuing it but maybe something related). are you kidding me? thanks google.

demonllama 7y ago
What about google takeout - https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
- modzu 7y ago
  thanks for the link, will try this!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
justintime2002 7y ago
I'm not sure what you mean. If I go to photos.google.com, I can easily select a range of photos (Shift-Click to select an entire range) and download them all as a zip folder.
- modzu 7y ago
  i encourage you to try this with thousands of photos; the list is lazy-loaded so it's not even possible to select them all.
matt_heimer 7y ago
There is, at least until July 10, 2019. The officially documented method was to enable the Google Photos folder in Google Drive and just download everything from Google Drive. Its documented at https://support.google.com/photos/answer/7652919 https://support.google.com/photos/answer/7652919 After July 10, 2019 it seems like https://photos.google.com/apps https://photos.google.com/apps and https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout might be the only options.
- modzu 7y ago
  the first method has several documented glitches -- like photos you've imported but didn't take on your phone may be missing, linked accounts are excluded, etc. and the whole process feels broken, there is no indication when the sync from photos to drive is complete (it can take days), i could go on.
autoexec 7y ago
I see no reason to use Google photos. Having a cloud back up is nice, but I'm the kind of person who wants to locally encrypt anything personal backed up to a server outside of my control. I assume Google trawls through every photo you upload using facial recognition to ID everyone in them, identifying what products are in the photos, making guesses about your economic status and habits etc. No need to hand over the intimate moments of my life, my friends, and my family to help google build a better dossier.
ir77 7y ago
for anyone on (iOS) thinking about dumping google photos do it now, before it's too late. without even looking at this article and post if have been migrating off google to iOS. i have over 13,000 photos and videos in google photos that i tried to "take out" this weekend and move over to icloud: -the take out process gave me 3 zip files with total size of 108gb when only 80gb are actual images/videos. there is essentially 2x .json files for each picture that google adds their own data to -the takeout process absolutely breaks live photos. the 3MB originals become 200K stills. - the take out process creates .mov files which are not importable into photos/iclouds - the take out process creates .jpg files which are not importable into photos/iclouds, they're full size pictures but the only .jpg that works is a duplicate at fraction of original size. - out of over 13K "take out" files i was only able to import a little over 11K, what happened to the 2K images i have no idea, i don't even know how to parse through them, with all of the extra.json files all over the place it's an effing mess. i tried also downloading directly from photos apps. after it "creating a zip" archive for me about 6x in 8 hours and constantly failing i did notice that my browser tried to download over 60 individual 2gb zip files, a complete mess that never did work out. i finally got the back up & sync option working (the one that's actually going away) and was able to sync, overnight, all 13K images and videos to my desktop. there are no extra json files and all live photos seem to be exactly as they were. tonight i'll be deleting the 11K photos from icloud and re-importing the clean 13K files i downloaded through backup&sync last night, I hope it goes much smoother. i think this is intentional lock-in by google, as long as you use the google photos app on ios it shows you all images just fine, along with live photos, but what you forget is that you no longer own these photos, not in bulk anyways. as soon as you try to take them out you get crippled versions on there and you see the level of privacy invasion that google take your photos to (by adding their own tag data through .json files). if you have a lot of images invested in google but are not on the android platform really do consider getting out now.

by modzu 7y ago

demonllama 7y ago

What about google takeout - https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

modzu 7y ago
thanks for the link, will try this!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

justintime2002 7y ago

I'm not sure what you mean. If I go to photos.google.com, I can easily select a range of photos (Shift-Click to select an entire range) and download them all as a zip folder.

modzu 7y ago
i encourage you to try this with thousands of photos; the list is lazy-loaded so it's not even possible to select them all.

matt_heimer 7y ago

There is, at least until July 10, 2019. The officially documented method was to enable the Google Photos folder in Google Drive and just download everything from Google Drive. Its documented at https://support.google.com/photos/answer/7652919 https://support.google.com/photos/answer/7652919 After July 10, 2019 it seems like https://photos.google.com/apps https://photos.google.com/apps and https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout might be the only options.

modzu 7y ago
the first method has several documented glitches -- like photos you've imported but didn't take on your phone may be missing, linked accounts are excluded, etc. and the whole process feels broken, there is no indication when the sync from photos to drive is complete (it can take days), i could go on.

autoexec 7y ago

I see no reason to use Google photos. Having a cloud back up is nice, but I'm the kind of person who wants to locally encrypt anything personal backed up to a server outside of my control. I assume Google trawls through every photo you upload using facial recognition to ID everyone in them, identifying what products are in the photos, making guesses about your economic status and habits etc. No need to hand over the intimate moments of my life, my friends, and my family to help google build a better dossier.

ir77 7y ago

for anyone on (iOS) thinking about dumping google photos do it now, before it's too late. without even looking at this article and post if have been migrating off google to iOS. i have over 13,000 photos and videos in google photos that i tried to "take out" this weekend and move over to icloud: -the take out process gave me 3 zip files with total size of 108gb when only 80gb are actual images/videos. there is essentially 2x .json files for each picture that google adds their own data to -the takeout process absolutely breaks live photos. the 3MB originals become 200K stills. - the take out process creates .mov files which are not importable into photos/iclouds - the take out process creates .jpg files which are not importable into photos/iclouds, they're full size pictures but the only .jpg that works is a duplicate at fraction of original size. - out of over 13K "take out" files i was only able to import a little over 11K, what happened to the 2K images i have no idea, i don't even know how to parse through them, with all of the extra.json files all over the place it's an effing mess. i tried also downloading directly from photos apps. after it "creating a zip" archive for me about 6x in 8 hours and constantly failing i did notice that my browser tried to download over 60 individual 2gb zip files, a complete mess that never did work out. i finally got the back up & sync option working (the one that's actually going away) and was able to sync, overnight, all 13K images and videos to my desktop. there are no extra json files and all live photos seem to be exactly as they were. tonight i'll be deleting the 11K photos from icloud and re-importing the clean 13K files i downloaded through backup&sync last night, I hope it goes much smoother. i think this is intentional lock-in by google, as long as you use the google photos app on ios it shows you all images just fine, along with live photos, but what you forget is that you no longer own these photos, not in bulk anyways. as soon as you try to take them out you get crippled versions on there and you see the level of privacy invasion that google take your photos to (by adding their own tag data through .json files). if you have a lot of images invested in google but are not on the android platform really do consider getting out now.