Create albums from folders / remove duplicates

Question

I am using Google Photos to backup my old photos. Using the mac desktop uploader. I have an external hard drive with folders in the following format:

|
+- 2005
  +---Wedding
  +---Trip to france
  +---Bachelor party
+- 2006
  +---Work travel to Japan
  +---etc
+etc..

I want google photos to automatically create the albums according to folder names. Is that possible? How?

Also I got a bunch of duplicates on google photos - is there any tool to clean those?

I've found this question: Create albums on Google Photos from folders of photos on local disk - but the answers talk about Picasa which has been retired so its no longer relevant or possible.

Answer 1

I want google photos to automatically create the albums according to folder names. Is that possible? How?

Albums can't include other albums, no it's not possible to replicate a hierarchical folder structure as albums.

One alternative is to use Google Drive for PC/Mac as it will sync the folder structure.

Another alternative is to upload the folders to Google Drive through the http://drive.google.com by uploading your folders to My Drive or to a previously created folder.

Answer 2

I've recently created and released a desktop application that does exactly that: http://jiotty-photos-uploader.yudichev.net. It's free, open source and works in all popular operating systems. A summary of what it does is extracted from the project wiki:

Jiotty Photos Uploader is a simple desktop application for Windows, macOS and Linux that scans a folder, including all subfolders, for photos and videos, and uploads them to your Google Photos gallery arranging into albums according to the directory structure.

When creating albums, each album name is composed of all the intermediate folders in the hierarchy, separated by colon. For example, the following structure:

Folder1
     photo1.jpg
     Folder2
        video1.mov     
photo2.jpg

will result in this layout in your Google Photos gallery:

Media item | Will be uploaded to album 
==========================================
photo1.jpg | Folder1
photo2.jpg | Will not be added to any album 
video1.mov | Folder1: Folder2

The app is able to resume where it left off, so it will not attempt to re-upload all those photos and videos it already uploaded, unless you ask it to.