How I got my photos out of Google Photos
The Google hegemony
Like many smartphone owners out there, I got lured many years ago by Google’s free and unlimited photo storage space to save up some local space on my iPhone. What was the catch? They compressed the files if I wanted to stay in the free tier, but at the time it sounded like an acceptable compromise.
Everything was great. I would open up the Google Photos app every once in a while, let my newly taken pictures sync, and then delete them from local storage to make some space to take more.
End of the free service
Fast forward to November 2020: Google has now announced that they will end their free service after June 1, 2021, and any new photos and videos you upload will count towards the free 15GB of storage that comes with your Google Account.
What does that mean to my pictures that are already there? Luckily, anything uploaded before that date will be exempt from the storage limit, but anything uploaded after will be considered. Therefore, you have to take a serious look at whether or not Google Photos is a service worth staying with.
Personally, I back up hundreds of photos per month, and with today’s incredibly high-quality smartphone cameras, file sizes are becoming increasingly large.
So what does 15GB of space give you? About 5,000 photos at 3MB each. Not much, right?
Moving away from Google
To me, Google discontinuing their free service was a sign to think about moving away from Google Photos altogether. Google doesn’t have the best track record at keeping their apps alive for long, and that means I can’t trust them with decades of memories, even if I was on the paid tier.
This led me to attempt to move away from Google Photos. I initially tried using Google Takeout, which, at first glance, seemed like a very convenient tool to get everything out of there quickly. You just have to select what you want to export and wait for Google to send you a download link.
However — and this is where the real problem starts — photos and videos from Google Takeout do not seem to export with their right date and time. If you were to import pictures and videos from Google Takeout directly into another photo library application, they would import in random order and you would lose the whole chronological order of your memories.
To me, this was absolutely unacceptable. How could such a large tech organization hand you back your files so disorganized? It’s almost as if they want to make it difficult to leave so you stay. After much reading on the topic, I discovered that Google exports your photos’ metadata (which includes GPS coordinates, dates and times, time zones, and other information) into a separate JSON file alongside each photo.
The information is all there. It’s just not in the photo.
Exiftool
Forums and articles were quick to suggest Exiftool as a solution to modifying exif metadata, and recommended a variety of commands to run. However, the command-line tool had its learning curve for someone like me, and I wasn’t able to find that one perfect command that would do everything I needed, which always left me with problematic files after processing.
Metadata Fixer
And this is where I stumbled across this tool called MetadataFixer. It seemed to be purposefully made for Google Takeouts and addressed all the issues I was facing. It essentially merges the entirety of the JSON file back into each video and photo, as well as fix the time zone issues while also processing any file type properly.
Metadata Fixer’s interface. Source: https://metadatafixer.com/download
It seemed too good to be true but I decided to give it a try. I was pretty desperate to find a solution at that point, especially with thousands of pictures and videos that had yet to be corrected with no other viable solution in sight. There was a catch, though: the tool cost $15 to process all your photos.
There was a free trial, however, that processed 100 pictures to try it out. I gave that a try, processed 100 pictures, and brought it into Apple Photos on my Mac to test it out. And to my great surprise, everything imported properly! The screenshots and videos processed properly, and even a picture from a trip had the correct local time at which it were taken (something I had a hard time fixing in Exiftool).
So I went ahead and purchased the full version. It processed 20GB in about 5–10 minutes, and the process couldn’t have been easier. The app took the zip, processed the pictures, and put them in a folder of my choice. I then dragged them all in Apple Photos and, as promised, everything imported perfectly and in the right chronological order!
Now everything isn’t perfect because I never received a receipt for my purchase, but I got everything figured out after contacting the developers, who were very quick and helpful.
Conclusion
If you’re trying to move away from Google Photos, and have been struggling to get your photos back in their chronological order, I would recommend you give Metadata Fixer a try 🙂 Despite some hiccups, it processed my photos exactly as promised and brought an end to my chapter with Google Photos.
