Google Photos: A Photo Organizer’s Love/Hate Relationship

Let’s talk Google Photos! Many people love using Google Photos to organize their images, but as a photo organizer, there are a few things that I don’t love. For many people, Google Photos is a simple-to-use platform that provides them with the experience that they need. When taking a closer look at the functionality of the app, there are a few things that I would like to point out to users. 

Google Photos LOVE:

1. Amazing facial recognition – Google Photos does a great job of allowing users to tag people in images. This can be useful when trying to find photos of a specific person. It automatically starts to put like faces in groups. You can just add a name to that group and as you add more images, it will continue to look for those people. It will occasionally ask if it’s the same person and it is relatively easy to change a face tag if it gets it wrong.

2. Auto-sync between devices – This allows users to take pictures on their phone and have them automatically uploaded to their computer through cloud storage. This can be nice when editing, cropping, or blowing up an image. This process can be simpler on a larger screen.

3. Creation of movies and videos – Google Photos will create a monthly recap of images you took at different events and locations. These can be fun to look back on later. If you take photos of a sunset, Google Photos will compile them all into a singular slideshow. This can also be a nice way to rediscover images that you may have forgotten about.

4. Locations – It will automatically show you the locations of your phone photos and allow you to find photos by country, state, city, and even neighborhood. It also allows you to add locations to photos that do not have GPS data.

5. Things – Want to search for a tree, sunglasses, mountains, or a wide variety of things? Google Photos allows you to search for almost anything. Now the results are not always accurate but do work rather well.

6. Easy sharing with others – One way to share is Partner Sharing, my husband has an Android, and I have an iPhone so we have this turned on so that I can see his photos without him needing to share each one. Features like this one can assist in making life simpler. It is also easier to share an album from an event with a group of people.

As you may have noticed in the pros listed, Google Photos is not a bad platform by any means. Some features can be extremely helpful, especially for busy families who don’t want to worry about backing up or sharing photos manually. If you are someone who doesn’t take photos often, Google Photos may be a great option for you. However, this does not dispel a few of the concerns that I have with Google Photos.

Google Photos HATE:

1. Everything in Google Photos stays in Google Photos – All that tagging that was easy to do, is ONLY visible in Google Photos, and people tags or AI-generated tags can not be downloaded. This can be incredibly frustrating, especially when trying to move images to a different platform. 

2. WARNING – Deleting is often deleting from your phone – If you use the Google Photos app on your phone you are seeing all the photos on your phone in the app. I have known several people who thought they were deleting images from Google Photos and deleted photos from their phones. Once this happens, you will have a short amount of time to remove the images from your trash folder. Otherwise, if you don’t realize the mistake, the photos could be gone. (I see this most with Apple/iCloud users who think the photo is in iCloud so they can delete it from Google Photos.) If you want to delete something from Google Photos but leave it on your camera roll, log into Google Photos on a computer and not the app.

3. It’s not easy to get all your photos out – Google Takeout allows users to copy the data stored in Google Photos, but it has to be done in groups, and if you are not keeping track, it can be very confusing. I also recommend Metadata Fixer to make sure the dates are accurate (especially for videos).

4. Uploading gets confusing – If you don’t have automatic syncing turned on and need to upload images into the platform, things get a little strange. If you upload images to Google Drive, you will not be able to view them in Google Photos. However, if you upload images into Google Photos you will be able to view them in Google Drive. This can get confusing and result in images becoming lost, especially for those who are not technologically savvy.

5. Duplicates – There is no easy way to remove duplicates besides manually looking and them and deleting them. I ran into this issue a few years ago where I was getting duplicates of several of my photos and I don’t know for sure what was happening. (and if it happened to someone who does this for a living, imagine a less techy person)

6. Data mining and Privacy – You need to read the terms and conditions as all of that awesome face recognition and thing recognition is being done by AI and you are helping train it.

7. No Folders – You are not able to create folders in Google Photos which means if you create albums, they can get out of control quickly.

8. Lose Access – You could lose access to Google. This doesn’t happen often but it could. 

1. 1. You switch to a new email and have photos in the old account that you never use, they can delete accounts to non-activity.
   2. Someone hacks your Gmail and you get locked out.

One of my followers, Maury McCoy, shared his thoughts on the platform. “I love Google Photos.  That said, I keep a full-resolution copy of all my phone photos on an HD on my PC and backed up to the cloud as well,” said McCoy. He continued by sharing, “if I’m trying to find a photo, Google can’t be beat…It’s getting better all the time and automatically tags pics as I upload them.” This is how I would recommend using Google Photos, as a way to search for photos and easily share photos but not as a long-term backup or as a legacy collection.

Like every photo-sharing/storing platform, Google Photos has its pros and cons. I use the platform to share photos with my husband and occasionally with other people. It is also great for searching BUT it does not make for a good Memories Hub.  

If Google Photos works for you, please make sure you have two more copies of your photos elsewhere so that you can follow the 3-2-1 backup method! 

Need help understanding Google Photos or getting your memories out of Google Photos, schedule a 20-minute free consultation.