Organizing Photos with Google Photos
In March of 2020, the United States was hit with an unprecedented health pandemic called the Coronavirus. During that time, many of us were confined to home. That time allowed me to scan in pictures and reduce the physical copy. The volume that I scanned in allowed me to see the features in Google Photos that were lacking and the benefits.
My choice for photo organizing came down to iPhoto and Google Photos. In the end I selected Google Photos. My selection of Google Photos was related to the other Google services that I have with a Google Business account.
The photos that needed to be added to Google Photos included print and slides. For scanning, I use the Epson v330 flatbed scanner. This scanner allows you to scan in slides as well as the standard photos. The Epson software is robust enough to perform the scanning for the photos. In my setup, I scan the files to my local machine and then upload them to Google Photos in batches.
Once a batch is ready, selecting the files from the file manager allows you to drag them into your Google Photo window. You can also use a navigation window from Google Photo to upload the photos.
Upon uploading a batch, I look at each picture and perform the following tasks: Copy the text written on the picture to the description field, add in any names I recognize in the picture and set the date. If I do not have any text to copy, I leave the date as the date when it is scanned in and the description as blank. Once the properties are set, I will add the photo to an album. For example, Disneyworld 1998.
After the photos are scanned in, logging in a day later, Google Photos has picked up on a number of faces in the photos. Once that occurs you can set names with the faces. This feature gets better with more photos scanned. Google photos has done an amazing job to recognize me at 4 years old vs. me at 50 years old.
While the facial recognition is incredible, Google Photos lacks the ability for the “Retail i.e. non-developer” person the ability to list all of the albums you have created. Although they do have an API to set this up, (Google Developer Link) it is not native in the product. My recommendation is to create an Excel Spreadsheet with the albums you create. With the increase in albums that you create you can reference the spreadsheet to add your photos to an existing album.
Google photos has helped me to share a number of historical photos that provided some great humor. It has also allowed me to reduce a number of pictures that were just taking up space in a cabinet. In the end, my recommendation includes:
- Use Google Photos to scan in your photos
- Purchase a scanner that can capture film and slides
- Make a list of your albums as you create them
- Fill in as much as you can on the description and date field.
- Set a target to scan 10 a day. Do not plan to sit at your computer all day and scan in all of your photos at one time