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Google announced today the new Google Photos: unlimited storage up to 16 MegaPixel!

I have an hard disk of ~10GB of photos, and I would like to copy them to Google Photos.

My main concern is that the photos I have are stored in folders like:

photo_summer_2008
christmas_2009

Is there a way to upload the pictures to Google and create an album for each folder, with the album name created from the folder name?

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  • I'm looking for the same answer. I can tell you for a fact that it WON'T automatically create any albums, only videos, collages and stylized photos. I tried uploading with Picasa but if you choose full size upload, it will NOT use the new high res compression but raw upload which will take ages and will count against your Google storage. Let's hope for a Picasa 4.0 with this functionality ready.
    – user95126
    Commented May 30, 2015 at 23:20

4 Answers 4

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There is no way in 2017 to do this. Picasa no longer exists.

It surprises me that no 3rd party app has appeared to manage Google Photo upload with combined album creation, I assume Google does not provide a public API for this.

Many people have asked for way to convert desktop folders to Google Photos Albums, for some reason Google has chosen not to do this. It's obviously a deliberate decision.

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    There was plenty of tools that used the Picasa API to do this. I personally used a lightroom plugin to manage my Google Photos via the Picasa API which no longer works. Still looking for a new workflow that I'm happy with.
    – Iain
    Commented Sep 8, 2017 at 19:34
  • I'm looking as well Iain, but there's no sign Google will support this and they haven't created an API that would let others build tools.
    – John Faughnan
    Commented Sep 17, 2017 at 14:38
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    Even picasa is retired you can still download it on the web and use "Batch Upload" function to convert PC folders into Google Photos Albums
    – Hrvoje Golcic
    Commented Apr 14, 2018 at 11:15
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    Half-automatic solution: use 'Backup and Sync' from Google to synchronize the root folder with all your sub-folders. When sync is done, drag a sub-folder onto the Google Photos web page. The upload will be finished instantly because Google Photos web app will recognize that they were already uploaded, and you will have to just fill-in album name.
    – dux2
    Commented Feb 13, 2019 at 19:44
  • @dux2 Thanks, your solution (still) works! I think that's the best workaround for this incredible flaw of Google Photos.
    – Tropilio
    Commented Sep 3, 2019 at 8:06
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Finally there is a solution!! (as of January 2016).

You can import all of your folders (folder = album) into Picasa and then upload them to Google Photos. You have to choose Upload original size, otherwise your photos are downgraded to 2048x2048.

Of course Google is going to count this against your quota. However, there is a new option in Google Photo, in the settings, named "Recover storage", which does the compression from original to High Resolution JPEG automatically on Google Servers.

This is going to free-up all the space you used uploading in original size and all photos will be hosted for free.

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    What happens when Google completely shutters Picasa? From picasa.google.com: "We’ve decided to retire Picasa in order to focus on a single photo service in Google Photos. [...]"
    – Johnny Utahh
    Commented Apr 2, 2016 at 14:20
  • Picasa appears to be gone now.
    – Iain
    Commented Apr 13, 2017 at 8:23
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+100

It looks like the new desktop uploader available from https://photos.google.com/apps does what you hope.

I originally thought it was just the same app as Google+ Photos backup, but it appears to be a refresh. There's a lot of photos for it to go through, but I'm starting to see new albums that match my folder names.

If you use Picasa and the "Sync to Web" feature within a folder, an album will indeed be created using the name of the folder. (I've done it now for three or four and it seems to hold.)

It can take a little time for all the photos to be uploaded, and Picasa has not been updated for the new Google Photos yet, so it must be relying on the synchronization set up between Google+ Photos and Google Photos.

I tried several different methods of organizing the photos within Google Drive, but it just wouldn't create an album automatically (although the images are there).

The alternative it to drag-and-drop a folder onto the Google Photos main page. The contents of the folder will get uploaded and you'll be asked if you want to create an album and, if so, the name. (This may be a Google Chrome thing.)

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    Thanks, I'll try the desktop uploaded and write here if it works for me!
    – Andrea Zonca
    Commented Jun 6, 2015 at 16:26
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    tried with the desktop uploader on Windows. It doesn't work. It does not create an album for each folder, it just uploads all of the photos in Google Photos. However, if I search for the album name, Google gets the right photo. So it looks like the folder name is saved in the metadata, but I couldn't find a way to display it.
    – Andrea Zonca
    Commented Jun 26, 2015 at 21:36
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    Yeah, this answer is incorrect, the desktop uploader does not create albums for folders
    – Steve
    Commented Jan 3, 2016 at 17:27
  • This method just worked for me on MacOS 10.10.5, Chrome 49.0.2623.87: drag-and-drop a folder onto the Google Photos main page. Asks if you want to add to an album, then create a new album.
    – Johnny Utahh
    Commented Apr 2, 2016 at 14:36
  • @AndreaZonca I used to be able to search by folder name too, but this feature seems to be gone with the latest "Google Backup and Sync" client. Grrr.
    – Sébastien
    Commented Sep 3, 2018 at 15:53
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Picasa now says - upload to google photos - so I think that is the way to go just now if you want your uploaded folders to create albums of the same name in google photos.

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    Would you mind to test it out with a couple of sample folders and let us know if it actually works?
    – Andrea Zonca
    Commented Jul 23, 2015 at 15:49
  • Yes - I've been uploading all day - works perfectly - the album just takes the same name as the folder.
    – AndyT
    Commented Jul 23, 2015 at 18:38
  • this is great news, I look forward to test it!
    – Andrea Zonca
    Commented Aug 4, 2015 at 20:35
  • thanks! this works great, just import all photos into Picasa, then use the "Batch upload" to upload everything to Google Photos, it will create albums matching the folder names.
    – Andrea Zonca
    Commented Nov 3, 2015 at 17:19
  • only issue is that I cannot use the free 16MegaPixel high quality storage, so either the 2048x2048 free storage or the "original" storage, which uses space on the account...
    – Andrea Zonca
    Commented Nov 15, 2015 at 6:03

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