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Google Photos – Can I get out?
- WWKong 11y agoLike with all other Google services you should be able to get your data out using the takeout service.
- andrenotgiant 11y agohttps://google.com/takeout https://google.com/takeout - Yep, still has photos capabilities
- taylorlapeyre 11y agoThe answer, as the author points out, is yes. You can get them out via Google Drive. The author also thinks that Google is doing something bad by compressing a large uncompressed RAW file to 2mb, but that's the tradeoff you get for asking for unlimited storage from the service. Google clearly states that photos synced to Google Photos with unlimited storage get compressed a lot. On the other hand, if you pay Google for more Google Drive space and use Photos to sync your images there instead, there is no compression.
- Ensorceled 11y agoI think he means bad in the sense of "8:1 compression means poor quality photos which shouldn't happen for a photo site" rather than bad in the sense of "google is doing something wrong, immoral or illegal".
- chias 11y agoIt's hard not to get 8:1 compression when we're starting from a RAW file
- ygra 11y agoRaw already is compressed. My 40D takes raw files around 12 to 15 MiB. They vary in size, so that's a first clue. Also, if you do the math, 14 bits per channel on those images comes out around 65 MiB.
- Ensorceled 11y agoMy understanding is that most RAW formats such as CR2 already had lossless compression applied, so any compression would pretty much have to be lossy to some degree, especially a 8:1 compression.
- rubenv 11y agoI've uploaded that RAW file with the "Original" (paid) setting. It's ok when downloading in the web app, it seems to be compressed in the Google Drive view.
- higherpurpose 11y agoI uninstalled Photos right after I installed it. Why? Because as soon as you install it and you open it, it starts to indiscriminately upload all of your photos to Google's servers. Now, I get that this is supposed to be a "cloud service" and whatnot. But I'd prefer if it was very clear when I choose to upload them to the cloud, and I'd also prefer to pick and choose which photos go into the cloud by default. If people want to upload everything by default to Google's server, that should be an opt-in feature.
- timothya 11y ago> it starts to indiscriminately upload all of your photos It only uploads your photos if you check the "Back up & sync" checkbox when you first start the app. If you uncheck that box, it won't upload anything. Don't spread FUD.
- kuschku 11y agoAnd it’s still illegal in many countries to upload and process private data without explicit permission. And, as previous cases showed, permissions granted through default-checked boxes, or permissions granted through fine print hidden in the ToS are legally not binding, meaning the uploading is considered a computer crime. Thilo Weichert, data protection officer of the state of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, did several law cases based on this against Facebook, and almost all of them.
- izacus 11y agoWhat? Google Photos (just like before) gives you a FULL SCREEN question asking if you want to backup before it even lets you run it. So, again, what are you talking about?
- kuschku 11y agoDefault checked is still illegal. Even if it gives you a full screen of info. As someone who doesn’t read it and just clicks through the options should never lose any private data. Everything that touches your private data has to be opt-in. Or it does not count as "explicit permission", meaning the upload, processing, etc is illegal.
- davb 11y agoActually, there is a setting in Google Photos (at least the web interface) which lets you choose between "High quality" and "Original" (Menu -> Settings). "High quality" recompresses large files, but gives you unlimited storage space for these recompressed files. "Original" doesn't recompress or alter the files at all, at the expense of using your Google Drive/Email/Storage space. I'm not necessarily on board with auto photo backup (I don't completely trust it - some photos should just remain private), but I like that they give you this choice. What I really (really) hate is that they've moved the delete button. It's no longer a button on the toolbar at the bottom (on the Android app), it's in the menu and labelled "Delete local copy". I take a lot of throwaways while trying to get the right shot - deleting photos is an every-day part of my workflow (I delete more than I keep). This has now gone from one quick tap to three (there's a confirmation dialog when you finally click the delete button). This is a very frustrating change.
- timothya 11y ago> What I really (really) hate is that they've moved the delete button. It's no longer a button on the toolbar at the bottom (on the Android app), it's in the menu and labelled "Delete local copy". Once you select one or more images, the delete button shows up in the toolbar. Just one tap. http://i.imgur.com/EH2M5iM.jpg http://i.imgur.com/EH2M5iM.jpg
- davb 11y agoThat's the old Photos app. This doesn't happen on the latest build.
- asdf99 11y agothe cloud only exists because storage is cheap. it should actually kill the cloud because storage is cheap. but all cloud providers go out of their way to make their platform painful to use without their cloud. Apple makes backing up photos with iphoto annoying. Google makes backing up photos via an app much easier than via usb or rsync on your home network... etc
- thrownaway2424 11y agoStorage in terms of raw bytes really is dirt cheap, but storage in terms of erasure encoded, encrypted, multi-homed, highly-available file systems isn't. Just buying a hard drive isn't going to get you very far. The durability of a file on a cloud service is going to far outstrip that of your local hard drive or even a fancy NAS.
- pgeorgi 11y agoCloud services outliving my (not so fancy) NAS. So, where's my Webshots account? (since we're talking photos, let's take a photos example. It shouldn't be hard to find an example of a dead web service for any other kind of data, either) _My_ datastore still exists and proudly provides those files from my redundantly stored, checksummed, auto-repairing local filesystem. No, I don't have an off-site backup. But neither had Webshots once they decided to shut down.
- monort 11y agoWhat auto-repairing filesystem do you use?
- pgeorgi 11y agoZFS
- Dylan16807 11y agoAt least you generally get a warning for a cloud service going down. Then it's around as much hassle as a single component of the NAS failing. I'm not sure what's more likely, a trustworthy-looking service disappearing out of the blue, or a RAIDed NAS being damaged in a way that data is lost.
- 0x0 11y agoGoogle's old desktop app "Picasa" is still my go-to for organizing photos. I make a file system folder for each "album". Everything stays local on the fs and there is no doubt about where the originals are (compared to iPhoto/Photos.app, etc etc). OSX' built-in Time Machine to an USB drive + rsync to a NAS takes care of multiple backups. I can easily drag&drop files into apps and upload forms with no doubt that I'm working on the best possible copy (original). Too bad the app appears to have been going unmaintained for some time now. It doesn't even support retina displays on OSX (in a photo app!)
- skynetv2 11y agoPiacasa is the best, both native and the online version. I still use it but its a bit confusing now that it some how has the Google plusiness added to it online
- istvan__ 11y agoCould not agree more. This is exactly how I backup my pictures too.
- frik 11y agoOn Windows the good old "Windows Live Photo Gallery" program that come with Vista (and is available for Win 7+ as download), is still a good alternative. The good thing it doesn't force one to use a database based album system. The photo files stay were the are, it only reads/extracts the metadata and optionally the user tags can be embedded back to the original file. Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Photo_Gallery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Photo_Gallery Download: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/photo-gallery http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/photo-galler... Edit: the offline-installer is hidden on this page: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/essentials-install-offline-faq http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/essentials-i...
- jbuzbee 11y agoBeen playing with Google Photos this morning and marveling how it is able to categorize beer, bridges, kangaroos, koalas, etc. But of course it gets some wrong. Anyone know how to change a categorization?
- jbuzbee 11y agoI just realized that this post makes me sound like an Aussie! I guess I should have thrown in that it also automatically recognizes bars, beaches, sunsets and sharks!
- testrun 11y agostill sounds like an Aussie.
- jzting 11y agoNot at the moment, but in the overflow menu there is an option to "Remove Results" where you can remove false positives from a set of results.
- notatoad 11y ago>There’s no way Google will know that “Trip to Thailand” should actually be labeled “Honeymoon” i wonder how much longer this will be true.
- whonut 11y agoThe only place I can see it getting info like this is a social network, and that means G+... In all seriousness, could they cross-reference dates in G+ posts and photos to see that you mentioned being on your honeymoon when it was taken? Seems like something they'd do if G+ was actually a thing people used.
- icebraining 11y agoThere's the Google Search looking for good place to stay on a honeymoon, the email or hangout message sent to the SO mentioning it, the calendar event, etc. Even just seeing that you're on an irregular stay in Thailand (which it got from your Android) right after your marriage can be telling.
- whonut 11y agoCompletely forgot email, calendar etc. D'oh.
- walterbell 11y agoOther options are Gmail Calendar SMS "Now on Tap" can MiTM content of every Android app
- notatoad 11y agoThey've got most people's email and calendar, that's a lot more data than G+.
- jbuzbee 11y agoI am seeing that it uses tags and faces that I previously put on photos within iPhoto and are evidently stored with Exif. So if you used iPhoto to tag your set "honeymoon" it will pick that up.
- Animats 11y ago"Once the (download) selection is large enough, it silently fails." "Mwahaha! Those sucker users will try a download and think they can get all their photos back. But they can't! They're ours now! Ours!" Hey, it worked for Instagram.[1] [1] http://www.cnet.com/news/instagram-says-it-now-has-the-right-to-sell-your-photos/ http://www.cnet.com/news/instagram-says-it-now-has-the-right...
- tedunangst 11y agoDid you bookmark that and post it without actually reading it? The update at the top, very first paragraph, makes it pretty clear it didn't work.
- therealmarv 11y agoAnd do not even try to edit your local desktop photos (desktop uploader will not recognize at all) or try to delete local photos. Google photos only works OK if you ONLY use your mobile phone for taking photos. If you have an normal camera like e.g. a DSLR and want to sync that with Google photos: Forget it. You will only have a lot of more management work with Google photos. Google photos is again a dead end for your data. What we need is a good two way sync for the desktop and more management possibilities in Google photos (because there are NO management features). If you look at Lightroom and their cloud sync (if you have an Adobe Cloud subscription): Adobe is lightyears ahead in syncing. Google clearly does not care at all about the desktop.
- therealmarv 11y agoHaha. So many downvotes? I wonder if anybody has a good solution which does not require 4-5 steps and two copies of an image to get photos on Google photos, edit them with Photoshop locally and resync that changes ;) with keeping my folder structure.
- CHY872 11y ago99% of people don't subsequently edit photos in photoshop; Google's tools are adequate. You're in the 1% who are power users, and so might find the mainstream solution inadequate. For that reason, software like Lightroom exists.
- davidcgl 11y agoI agree and I don't know why you get the downvotes. A large majority of users [1] take photos with their phones, upload a select few on social media, maybe with some basic filters/edits, and forget about the rest. Google Photos is designed for that use case, and not for the 1% power users. [1] No data to back this up, just my two cents.
- hueving 11y agoGoogle used to be known for not aiming for the lowest common denominator. They've gotten so large and crafty though that apparently "works good enough to capture the majority" has replaced "make something great for everyone".
- tedunangst 11y ago> Update: not quite, see below Did I miss the update? All that's mentioned below is that Google drive offers different files. There's nothing more about the download link.
- darklajid 11y agoI'd guess that this is a reference to either 1) you have to do it one by one (or in very small batches), because the zip export is broken 2) you get a different view via Google Drive (I don't use those service, cannot even begin to imagine why one would upload pictures to Google or use Google Drive, but - that's my take away from the article and my own interpretation)
- cddotdotslash 11y agoI don't understand all the outrage about Google compressing photos. They're offering a free service; they can do whatever they want to save space. If you don't want them to be compressed, use the fill size option and pay your share of storage.
- rubenv 11y agoNote that all testing was done with the paid "Original" option. I happily pay for things, but when I do I like to verify that it does what it says on the box.
- istvan__ 11y agoI have been using this for a while and one day I realized it is skipping some pictures when backing up. I went through all of my pictures and noticed ~5% is missing. This was the last day when I trusted Google with picture backups. On the other hand Flickr offers similar solution that actually does what it is supposed to.
- mvgoogler 11y agoIs this happening with the new app that launched this week? If you have concrete examples I could investigate.
- zwetan 11y agoI have the same experience with videos scenario: uploading a bunch of video files all named in the same pattern when coming back to the google photo interface to put those files in the same group, searching their name does not return the full list, only part of it. Only by searching "recently added" I can then find and add the missing files. If I could ask for features: - show the file name when you select an item - allow to search file name by regex
- istvan__ 11y agoHaven't tried that yet, but I moved over to iOS so this is not relevant anymore, but thanks.
- sorenjan 11y agoI have an example from before the new version of the Photos app came out. This might have changed since then. If I take a bunch of photos and then send some of them through Hangouts before I get home to my WiFi those photos doesn't get backed up. I'm guessing it's because Hangouts uses G+ albums for the photos, so technically the photos are on Google's servers, but they're not where I expect them to be (in Auto backup).
- notatoad 11y agoAre you sure? I haven't used the new Google photos, but Google+ photos confused me for a while because it defaulted to displaying "highlights" instead of all photos, where they picked the best one or two out of any similar pictures in the same timeframe and hid the rest. My photos were all there, i just had to use the all photos view.
- weitzj 11y agoDid anybody think of steganography, yet? Or will the compression brake it anyways?
- zwetan 11y agowhen I saw "unlimited free storage" I had to try :) my interest was more on the video than the photo, when you click the option "High quality (free unlimited storage)" the help mention it goes as far as 1080P for videos which is fair game for something free. So I uploaded a couple of 720P videos, and redownloaded them to compare if they were the same, what formats was supported, etc. The good: it works kind of like a private Youtube, it does process the video so when you watch it online you end up having it to auto 360P, which sucks a little. But if when you redownload the video you get the original one (not recompressed). The bad: the UI and file naming is a joke. I understand they wanted to make it simple to use and organise a lot of photos and videos, but not being able to see the filename to quickly select a bunch of files and put them in a group (or collection) is beyond me. But let focus on something even simpler: select an item and no file name ? I mean com'on google, am I not suppose to find/search easily trough my stuff ? No regex in file name search either ... My guess is the photo part was the main goal and the video part been added quickly without much of a thinking about it, I do hope it would get better. So far disappointing, if I was to upload all my videos there, I could not organise them easily and worst I could not find them, it would be useless.
- mynameisvlad 11y ago> No regex in file name search either ... I mean, come on, did you really expect this? Most consumer-oriented search systems I know of don't have this feature.
- frik 11y agoHe probably meant something like "*.jpg" which is common and works fine on Microsoft Windows and Apple OSX. And probably not the full Regex syntax as known from grep or Perl/PHP.
- mynameisvlad 11y agoA wildcard search, then. Sure, that's more common (although sometimes hilariously broken), I can give you that. I'd expect wildcard searches too, but only because Google is a search company. When I see a search box, I'm usually happy if it does a contains search instead of an exact match, that's how low my expectations have become.
- 7ewis 11y agoSo if you use Original, does it still use up your storage, even if the photo is under 16MP, or video under 1080P? From what I have read, they compress the files when 'High Quality' is chosen, so I'm guessing if you select original, it all counts towards your storage?
- mark_l_watson 11y agoI have my cellphone automatically back up pictures to both OneDrive and Google photos. Handy enough. But, I like the OneDrive (or Dropbox if you don't mind the politics of Dropbox) model: keep all photos and videos in chronological order, edit file names, if desired, to add description after the file stamp, and generate one off share URI links for friends to share pictures. That said I appreciate having the extra backups, even if lower resolution, on Google photos.
- pbw 11y agoI'm surprised the main timeline is a flat list. I have 30,000+ photos and sometimes have 300 photos of the same event. It's impossible to browse the overall contents with every photo shown. I created a prototype[1] 5 years ago of a hierarchical timeline using timestamps. It had it's own problems, but I would have thought by now someone would have figured out a solution. Machine learn a hierarchy where each coarser level has a subset which reasonably summarizes the next more detailed level. [1] - example http://pixtimeline.com/view/#105946173008403248796/5539140669398690945 http://pixtimeline.com/view/#105946173008403248796/553914066...
- flycaliguy 11y agoI've never really treated my photos like special data that require an interface beyond my OS. I keep them in an encrypted folder on my backup drive, on my laptop and on my cloud service. Maybe it's different if you have kids or something... but my folks only have about 60 photos of my entire youth and that's 40 too many.
- jasonkostempski 11y agoYes, it's different when you have kids. I don't give 1 shit about any photo my kid isn't in, but all photos he is in, regardless of quality, must be preserved FOR ALL ETERNITY!! I suspect that feeling is common among parents. That's why your parents have those 40 other pictures :)
- jasonkostempski 11y agoAfter just a day of playing with it, I love the Google Photos service for what it is, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't be a viable backup solution. If a service offers anything more than strictly "file backup", it's a sure thing you will lose quality and/or won't be able to get at it easily. I already have a good backup system utilizing my free $50/month Azure benefits that come with my MSDN subscription so I'm not really concerned about it. I personally don't care much about sharing features but if Google can actually make this a good backup + sharing system then they will win. For me "good" means my original files are kept as-is and that upload/download is relatively quick. I'm fine with days, not weeks. Azure (CloudBerry) took less than 5 hours for my 100GB library over 35Mbs upload FiOS, but Google Photos isn't even 1/10th of the way done after a day. I love how it has mashed-up my photos into categories, stories, animations and collages. Literally love it, it IS great. But backup system, it is not.
- sosuke 11y agoCan you comment on your Azure based backup system? I have similar Azure credits.
- jasonkostempski 11y agoIt's not super automatic but CloudBerry Explorer for Azure [1] is free and has a pretty good folder sync feature. I basically just keep all my photos and videos in single a folder on my desktop. Whenever I copy my families phones or tablets to my PC I just run the saved sync, it's usually pretty quick. I have over 90 GB of stuff so it actually took a long time for CloudBerry to analyse the folder for the first time, after that it figures out what's new and needs to sync pretty fast. [1] http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free-microsoft-azure-explorer.aspx http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free-microsoft-azure-explorer.a...
- giancarlostoro 11y agoIt's sad when you have to backup things from the cloud and not to the cloud, it's sad when the cloud isn't straight forward about your files.
- dk8996 11y agoThe one thing that screwed me over is that the Upload by default compresses the files to lower res. I lost some high-res photos this way.. this should not be a default setting.
- MiloMilo 11y agoGoogle Team, please help! 1. How can I transfer my photos folder structures to google photos? I manage to see the pictures on GPhotos but they are organized by year rather than my original folders. 2. Can I create a folder tree structure on GPhotos? This is very very important. thank you!
- MiloMalo 11y agoGoogle Team, please help! 1. How can I transfer my photos folder structures to google photos? I manage to see the pictures on GPhotos but they are organized by year rather than my original folders. 2. Can I create a folder tree structure on GPhotos? This is very very important. thank you!
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- carlosecpf 11y agoUnfortunately, the "high quality" option is really low quality in reality. Images that are crisp and sharp becomes very blurry on Photos. Some 12Mpx pictures that I have got downscaled to 0.3Mpx on photos. However it does not happen to all photos... Some of them deserve the "high quality compression" badge. It just seems to be aleatory. Please fix this issue!