Google Photos (Desktop Uploader) and Photos for Mac?

One thing to watch out for uploading from the Masters folder within the Photos OS X app is that it seems Google Photos recognises the date that the photo was imported to the OS X Photos app, rather than its original creation date.

For example, if you haven't run the Photos app for a week, open it, and then it syncs up and downloads the last week of photos from your iCloud Photo Library, if you then import those photos into Google Photos using the desktop uploader, they will all be timestamped with today in the app.

At least, that's what happened to me when I did a test upload. Either way, I decided to simply use the iOS Google Photos app to do the upload instead as then I know it will get it right.

Wow, I have not found that at all. At this point I have had Google Photos Uploader manage to upload photos from the Photos for Mac application via selecting /~Pictures, as well as selecting the "Masters" folder inside the Photos database file. In neither instance did Google take the date that the photo was imported into the OS X app -- it has always respected the original creation date via EXIF metadata. I just tested this, right now, using an old photo from a friend that I had in a separate folder on my laptop. I manually dragged it into Photos. It (correctly) showed up in a previous year (1999) there, and then Google Photos Uploader showed a pop-up that it was uploading, and then when I looked in http://photos.google.com, it was in the correct date. 1999, and not "today."

Aside from this, I feel it's important to mention yet again, that I do NOT have to run the Photos app on my iMac at all, for automatic photo importing/backing up to work. I leave the Photos app quit most of the time. I take photos with my iPhone. iCloud Photo Library syncs regardless, sending the photo from my iPhone to the iCloud library to my Mac, somehow in the background (yes, even with Photos not running) and Google Photos Uploader then sees that new photo and sends it to the Google cloud. Later I launch the Photos app, which shows the photo, too. And I know it's not the Google Photos app on my iPhone that's doing the uploading, because I've had "Back up & sync" turned off there.

Anyway, I wonder if this is a difference between iCloud Photo Library (yes, I am playing $48/year for 200 GB of space) and simple Photostream? In any case, it's all working rather brilliantly. Best of all, if I want to clean up recent photos, deleting bad/blurry ones, and I do this in the Google Photos app on my iPhone, or Google Photos on the Web, and it interacts with iCloud Photo Library. The phone app confirms with me if I want to want to delete these photos from the device and then a second dialog appears asking if I want to delete from iCloud Photo Library. Which means these deletions sync back to iCloud, and Photos for Mac on my iMac and laptop. Which pleases me greatly. It's a bit odd dealing with Google's Photo app when it's Apple I'm actually paying, but this workflow does the job and I feel I'm getting the best of both worlds. I especially appreciate Google's superior contextual search, the auto-awesome creations, and the easier (ecosystem-agnostic) share-ability.

I also wonder why so many people are having so many different experiences with Google Photo Uploader, and how it interacts (or doesn't) with Photos for Mac? All that being said, official support will be nice. But it's working quite well for me at this time. I hope my notes help someone out there!

Well that's good to hear. I don't know why the photos I imported were showing up as 'today' despite being taken a few days ago. Weird.

Does the Alias method play nicely with edits carried out in Photos? I'm not really sure how they're stored in the file system.

It appears those edited images are saved in dated sub-folders of the "Previews" folder that is inside the Photos Library package file. I haven't tried yet pointing Google's Photo Backup (Desktop Uploader) to an alias of that, though (just as I've already done with "Masters.")

For what it's worth, the filenames of the edited versions are the same as the originals. Manually exporting from iPhoto and then uploading to Google Photos works fine, the edited photo appears as a copy alongside the original in Google Photos. As far as how Google's Photo Backup utility would handle it, I do not (yet) know...

One slight variation on this method (which also worked for me - thanks).

I was having trouble finding the masters folder via the tags.

However, after you select "Add" in the Google Photos Backup preferences the dialgue comes up to locate a folder.

At this point you can just open another Finder window, navigate to the Masters folder of the desired library and drag and drop it into the dialogue.

Perhaps your masters to do not have dates in their EXIF data, then it would just use whatever the file modification time says.

worked perfect. Thanks.

There are suggestions to use a tag to show the folder. There's a simpler way, to my eyes:

-Right Click your Photos library, -> Show Package Contents.

-Click "Add" to add a new folder in Google Photos

-Drag "Masters" to the "Open" Dialog box.

This is standard behaviour in Mac OS. You can drag any folder or file to the open/save dialogs and they will "navigate" to it.

Eduardo Gutierrez De O. wrote:

There are suggestions to use a tag to show the folder. There's a simpler way, to my eyes:

-Right Click your Photos library, -> Show Package Contents.

-Click "Add" to add a new folder in Google Photos

-Drag "Masters" to the "Open" Dialog box.

This is standard behaviour in Mac OS. You can drag any folder or file to the open/save dialogs and they will "navigate" to it.

Yes, this thread already covers that heavily. However, there is also at least one report from a user who says that setting did not "stick" for him:

AndrewC1970 wrote:

I just tried this tip, and whilst I managed to add the "Masters" folder it does not stay in my list. It initially appears, but when I go back into the Google Photos Backup preferences, the "Masters" folder is gone.

And this might be because it's not a regular folder in the OS X Finder, it is a subfolder inside the Photos library/package file.

Therefore, the tagging suggestion (as well as the "use an alias of the Masters subfolder) is offered as an alternative to that.

I have used both the Alias trick as well as tagging the Masters subfolder as described by others in this thread. In all instances I am able to add the folder, but it does not stay in my Google Photos Backup Preferences once I go back to the preferences folder. I don't know why this is the case.

In any event (at least for me), this step of adding the Masters folder seems redundant as just adding the "Pictures" folder where my Photos Library resides is enough for Google Photos Backup to pick up and extract photos which are in my Photo Library.

AndrewC1970 wrote:

In any event (at least for me), this step of adding the Masters folder seems redundant as just adding the "Pictures" folder where my Photos Library resides is enough for Google Photos Backup to pick up and extract photos which are in my Photo Library.

Sure, that works, and in your case, seems to be your only current option. Worked for me, too -- but the unfortunate side effect was that it also uploaded all other JPG files, that were in other folders inside ~/Pictures. Things like clip art and desktop pictures I'd saved, separate from my digital photo collection inside iPhoto (and now the Photos for Mac app.) I didn't want that. So I went back to an alias of Masters, at least for now. I wonder why it's working for all of us but not you?

I don't know why it's not working for me.

I have an 2011 iMac running OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 and Google Photos Backup 1.1.0.265

This is the screenshot once my Masters folder is added.

After selecting OK, and going back to my Google Photos Backup Preferences, it goes back to this.

To make sure "Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary/Masters/" stays permanently in the list of selected folders, you *must* remove "Pictures/" from the list.

I found that Google Photos Backup rejects folders contained in folders already in the list; since "Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary/Masters/" is inside "Pictures/"... you get the ... picture.

So add Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary/Masters/ anyway you want (drag and drop from the package contents, tags, ...) but you must remove "Pictures" for this to work.

I had a bit of trouble with the Google uploader picking up the photos in the iPhoto library - it seemed to get stuck on the thumbnails and not continue. This was my work around:

1. Open the iPhoto database in iPhoto
2. Select all the Events
3. Exported the images as Originals with subfolder format = Event Name. Google Photos tags the photos in each subfolder with the event name, and then it becomes searchable.
4. Point the Google Photos uploader to the folder containing all the events.

Note: it had some trouble when there were sub folders within folders (I had multiple iPhoto libraries that I exported to one main Google folder, and it had some trouble with one of the sub folders). Now I've just split each iPhoto library into it's own folder containing all the Events, and point the uploader to each folder, which in turn contains all the events for that iPhoto library. Hope that helps.