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Scanned photos from Picasa to google Photo: experiences
tomos:
EDIT//
Bad news:
Google has disabled Picasa's ability to upload / download / sync photos to google photo.
The Picasa Desktop application will no longer support uploading or downloading photos and videos, creating online albums, or deleting online photos, videos and albums...
If you want to upload photos and videos to Google Photos, you can use Backup and Sync at photos.google.com/apps.
--- End quote ---
https://productforums.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/picasa/brvRowxSDcM
//EDIT
Sharing scanned photos:
from Picasa to google Photo (& back again) and related stories...
Goal:
to upload / share a large collection of scanned (family) photos, ideally allowing others to comment;
also to be able to share subsets of same images, (ideally via albums created in picasa)
Uploaded 1500 family photos to google Photo (henceforth 'gphoto') over the last couple of months. It's been a challenge, to say the least, and not at all as successful as I would have hoped. But the photos are up, and shared, so I'm happy to have gotten that far.
Here some info about the problems, in the hope that it will help anyone else trying to do something similar.
Google photo will only sort photos by the date the picture was taken.
This is logical for photos, but not so much for scans -- even if you are super-organised it's difficult to get the correct sequence before scanning.
Summary of solution:
make date-time the same for relevant photos; sort by name; re-upload -- there are very important details below: read on if you're going to do this.
I went to a lot of effort (to be described below: with the help of dc user Lintalist) to manually sort the scans locally using my filemanager, and rename them according to a correct timeline. You upload your images to gphoto and they are only sorted by date, so you need a workaround. You can manually move an image in gphotos, but it is not a particularly user friendly process, and not really feasible for hundreds of pics anyway.
The workaround is to change the date field to the same date-time on all relevant files:
* in Picasa:
First turn off the sync button for the album in Picasa.
Then select all images in the relevant album or folder that you want to sort by name in gphoto. If focus is in the album or folder, Ctrl+A will do the job.
menu: Tools > Adjust date and time -- add your new date, and select "Set all photos to the same date and time"
* in google Photo:
select your images - in the top right corner click the three dots menu: >Edit date and time
Unfortunately, if your pics are already uploaded, they will not resort in gphoto (way to go google):
Then you will have to delete the images online (ensure the sync button is set to 'off' for the album in Picasa first) -- I deleted the online album too (there may be a workaround for this, but if you dont delete the album, and turn on sync for the album in Picasa -- the photos are also removed from the album in Picasa -- the pics were not deleted locally, but I would be very careful here in case: !!backups!! ).
=>
The Picasa album remembers the older date sort, and may default to it, so make sure the album is sorted by name before you turn sync on.
menu: Album/Folder > Sort by name
Then, when you do sync, they will sort by name on gphoto.
To be continued with the topics:
* showing related info (metadata) in the online image (description / caption field)
* face recognition not recognised in gphoto (but album can be downloaded to a local Picasa to read this info - mostly works...)
* manually sorting and renaming photos
* recovering info added in the info panel in google photo (i.e. info added online: this is not synced back to Picasa) [ => see following post ]
tomos:
Re: Recovering info added in the Info field/panel in google photo (i.e. info added online: this is not synced back to Picasa)
* If you add text to the Description field it is shown online in google photos in the info field
* The field is called 'Caption' in Picasa: but is only shown if the field already has content :down:
* It appears to have different names depending on what app you are using (more thumbs down)
Via Windows Explorer (Win.7):
Right-click file >Properties (or simply Alt+Enter). On the Details tab, the field is shown as 'Subject'. I could not find the field using Windows Explorer's columns (Win.7), well I found a 'Subject' field but it was empty.
Via Dopus viewer: Edit Metadata (from context menu) has it under 'Document properties'
Now, online you can add text to the Info field, but is not saved in the photo -- not is it synced back to Picasa.
Don't know if it'll download any added photo info but you can try Google data download (Link - need to sign in).
You can export and download your data from the Google products you use, like your email, calendar, and photos.
--- End quote ---
-4wd (January 22, 2018, 06:47 PM)
--- End quote ---
that did work!
The info comes through as a .json file e.g.
Photo-name.jpg.json
Spoiler
--- Code: Text ---{ "title": "1936 xxxx.jpg", "description": "1936 Jack and Neil, 1st and 2nd from left. Back of photo: \"xxxx - June 28-1936\". Additional info here please.", "url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/.../1936%2Bxxxx.jpg", "imageViews": "0", "creationTime": { "timestamp": "1516701602", "formatted": "23 Jan 2018, 10:00:02 UTC" }, "modificationTime": { "timestamp": "1516701796", "formatted": "23 Jan 2018, 10:03:16 UTC" }, "geoData": { "latitude": 0.0, "longitude": 0.0, "altitude": 0.0, "latitudeSpan": 0.0, "longitudeSpan": 0.0 }, "geoDataExif": { "latitude": 0.0, "longitude": 0.0, "altitude": 0.0, "latitudeSpan": 0.0, "longitudeSpan": 0.0 }}
Which leads to the next question:
is there any software that will show the photo and read the info in the json file simultaneously?
-tomos (January 23, 2018, 04:56 AM)
--- End quote ---
this solution below was suggested by ayryq
Disclaimer: I havent tried it yet
ExifTool might do this automatically? I haven't tested it but see the following thread:
http://u88.n24.queensu.ca/exiftool/forum/index.php?topic=8154.0
And get the executable from:
http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/
To clarify: What the command-line ExifTool will do is read the description from the json file(s), and write it to the metadata attached to the picture(s). Then you'll have to find another program that lets you view them together (though this should be easy).
-ayryq (January 23, 2018, 11:14 AM)
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tomos:
reserved
Nod5:
I went to a lot of effort (to be described below: with the help of dc user Lintalist) to manually sort the scans, and rename them according to a correct timeline. You upload your images to gphoto and they are only sorted by date, so you need a workaround. You can manually move an image in gphotos, but it is not a particularly user friendly process, and not really feasible for hundreds of pics anyway.
The workaround is to change the date field to the same date-time on all relevant files
--- End quote ---
Isn't there a lot of manual work involved to shift/edit dates for many files in Google Photos? If you already have the images locally with datestrings in the filenames then an alternative approach would be to change the exif metadata date strings to match those in the filename and then reupload in bulk to Google Photos. If the datestring in the filename has the same format for all files then a pretty simple script could do the trick.
tomos:
I went to a lot of effort (to be described below: with the help of dc user Lintalist) to manually sort the scans, and rename them according to a correct timeline. You upload your images to gphoto and they are only sorted by date, so you need a workaround. You can manually move an image in gphotos, but it is not a particularly user friendly process, and not really feasible for hundreds of pics anyway.
The workaround is to change the date field to the same date-time on all relevant files
--- End quote ---
Isn't there a lot of manual work involved to shift/edit dates for many files in Google Photos? If you already have the images locally with datestrings in the filenames then an alternative approach would be to change the exif metadata date strings to match those in the filename and then reupload in bulk to Google Photos. If the datestring in the filename has the same format for all files then a pretty simple script could do the trick.
-Nod5 (March 07, 2018, 08:17 AM)
--- End quote ---
yes, that sounds good:
I manually sorted the files locally: in thumbnail view in my filemanager (dopus) -- which took a lot of work too, but was the easiest solution for me (I think). I was dealing with images that went back as far as the 1880's, most though were 1950 to 1980. So a lot of it was guess-work i.e. no definite date for majority of the images.
Then using Lintalist's script, I renamed (numbered) the files based on their new sequence.
Edit// made the text you quoted a bit clearer in OP (that I did the manual sorting locally with filemanager)
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