Use Google Backup & Sync to Share Your Best Photos from Your Computer to Google Photos

Google Backup & Sync is the recent combination of Google Drive and Google Photos Desktop Uploader into one product. Since Google Photos is using Google Drive storage space, it makes complete sense to combine both into one application. It surprises me however, how much both Google and Microsoft are copying Apple when it comes to managing people’s media. The much publicized iCloud feature that synchronizes media on all your Apple devices has just showed up in Google….but a bit different and still confusing and difficult to set up. Now you can synchronize multiple devices with your Google Drive storage space. Should you do it? My answer is no…for the most part! However, you can use Google Backup & Sync in a very useful way.

Why Share Only Selected Photos?

One of my complaints about social media platforms and people who use them is that they post tons of terrible pictures. I don’t mean badly composed pictures but rather lots of similar pictures from the same event. Instead of picking one or two great pictures they post one hundred almost similar. I am a big proponent of only sharing few selected photos that actually say something. So here is how you can automatically upload selected photos to Google Photos using Google Backup and Sync computer program.

Read more: Understand how Google Drive and Google Photos work together

1) Select Your Favorite Photos

Pick your favorite pictures.  Picking favorite photos varies depending on the software you use. In Picasa for example, you can star the photos and in Lightroom you can flag them or assign stars or a color to them. The point is that you want to establish a folder where only your favorite pictures go. Not all your pictures, but the best ones. I put all my favorite photos in the EXPORT/FAMILY folder.

2) Setup Google Backup and Sync on Your Computer

My recommendation is to only synchronize your cleaned up and organized folders from your main computer. This is where you have all your photos stored. In my case I only upload to Google Photos, selected and edited folders from my EXPORT/FAMILY folder…nothing else.

How to configure Google Backup & Sync

Here is how I do it.

• Download and install Google Photos Backup and Sync on your computer.
• Configure Google Backup and Sync so that it automatically picks up from my EXPORT/FAMILY folder.  This way, in Lightroom, when I export my favorite family photos to the EXPORT/FAMILY folder, they will automatically be uploaded to my Google Photos cloud storage space. There I can just simply create an album and share the link.
• Choose My Computer on the left and click Choose Folder. Select My Pictures/EXPORT/FAMILY. Important note: Choose your folder very carefully, because it is very slow to change this selection once you make it.  The user interface is very slow to respond.
• Click Change on the Backing up all files and select Backing up photos and videos.
• Choose High Quality so that you get unlimited storage.
• Determine what to do when you delete any items from synchronized devices.  If you don’t want any device to touch your computer’s photo collection, you can choose Don’t delete.

Google Backup & Sync configuration

3) Export your Favorite Photos into the Google Backup and Sync Ingest Folder.

• • I use Adobe Lightroom to select and edit my photos. Once I have edited my favorite photos, I am ready to export them to my EXPORT/FAMILY folder.
  • Export my favorite photos to your EXPORT folder. During the export process, Lightroom applies all my edits and cropping to my selected photos and creates new copies in the EXPORT/FAMILY folder.

3) Automatically Upload Your Selected Photos to Google Photos

Since my Google Backup & Sync has been configured to watch my EXPORT/FAMILY folder, it will notice these new photos. Then it will automatically start uploading them to my Google account (the same account for both Google Drive and Google Photos). Now your favorite photos will show up in your Google Drive account under Computers.

Google Drive Computers section shows all your synchronized devices

It is a really cool feature that when you look at your Computers section in Google Drive, your folder structure is preserved and you can also navigate your photos by folders.

4) Upload Your Photos to Google Photos

When setting up Google Backup & Sync, also select the “Upload new photos and videos to Google Drive”. This will also upload your pictures to Google Photos so you can see them from your phone or tablet.

Google has stopped making Google Drive work with Google Photos.  There use to be a setting in Google Photos where you can automatically upload photos from Google Drive to Google Photos.  That’s gone for now as the Google has simplified the settings in both Google Drive and Google Photos.  Google wants us to think of Drive and Photos as separate applications…at least for now.

You can also use this technique to upload all your photos from the MAIN folder, instead of just selected photos from the EXPORT folder. This way you can have all the organized and cleaned up pictures available on your phone.

Why Does this Make Sense?

For more than 10 years I recommend that you are the one who controls your photo collection.  This means you collect all your media on your main computer, you organize them in folders and add metadata and you back it up, locally and in the cloud.  Then you can use any of these new and changing services to share your selected and best photos with your family and friends. However, this means you turn off all the automatic backup and synchronization with all these services that push really hard to have you locked into their systems.  They make it easy to join, but very difficult in the long term to get out and retrieve your precious memories.

Essentials for organizing your digital photos

Here are the essential products and services I have come to rely on for many years to keep my media collection organized and safe. Even though these are affiliate links, I wholeheartedly recommend them.

Excellent Lightroom and Picasa alternative. If you need a cheaper and simpler photo manager then ACDSee Photo Studio for Mac (save 30% until May 24th) or ACDSee Pro for Windows (save $30 until May 24th) is my preferred solution for organizing all my media. It has a very fast browser, great image editing and it's simple to use.

If you do a lot of image editing like I do, I recommend using Adobe Lightroom Classic CC via the annual Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Lightroom has best photo editing capabilities even though it comes with a steeper learning curve. If you do image editing, Adobe Lightroom is my favorite.

I recommend Backblaze Cloud Backup for affordable & reliable unlimited cloud backup. I have been using Backblaze for backing up all pictures & videos for more than 5 years now. All my invaluable digital memories are safe and secure. This is the best solution especially if you have a large quantity of media files.

Use a reliable & affordable external hard drive for backing up everything on your computer. It is absolutely essential for keeping all your memories backed up and safe.

Start organizing now using detailed, step-by-step instructions and videos:
Personal Coaching (closed) Independent Course Private Lessons
Reference book Basics book Picasa book

YOURS FREE! 10 crucial steps most people miss when organizing their digital photos

Most people want to just organize their digital pictures and ignore these crucial steps right at the beginning...when they are shooting and transferring their digital pictures. Then they wonder why they can't organize their digital photos! Avoid most people's mistakes and start on the right track!

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