I’m currently in the middle of moving all of my photos, but I have a couple of issues that have come up.
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The first one has to do with metadata.When I replaced my phone recently, all the photo files were marked as “created” on the same day. They still show in the correct order by datestamp in Google Photos, but everything older than last April is just an undifferentiated mess. Is there a way to get them back in the right order?
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I have thousands of photos. Is there a way to easily see the total number in both Google and Proton to compare that everything is indeed backed up?
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There does not seem to be a way to jump to a particular date in Proton, which makes it arduous to find any photos, even if they were in the right order. Is there something I am missing? Is this feature coming?
These issues prevent me from being able to complete the switch. Can anyone help?
Google maliciously separates your photos and metadata when taking it out, in a non-standard format. You need a tool to reassemble them. I can’t remember the name.
Proton Photos is EXTREMELY basic, don’t expect any features at all.
I recommend Immich instead, if you can find a way to get it running.
That makes sense. But I’m not quite ready to set up a home server just yet. Proton was meant to be an intermediate step so that I can start shifting away from Google
I’m not sure about proton, but there are some tools for importing Google Takeout images into Immich (an open source Google Photos replacement). The tools stitch back together the pictures and xml files.
Just going off memory, the tools I’m thinking of typically work directly with Immich, but maybe there’s an option to simply dump the pictures into folders. Worth looking into!
This looks like a self hosted tool. Is there a way to use this app with proton?
No, unfortunately they’re completely different things. This method is definitely not easy, at least the way I see it in my head. I had a chance to look it up and the tool I’m thinking of is called Immich-Go. It requires Immich, so getting everything set up would be a PITA.
The steps would be:
- Install Immich (likely the most difficult part)
- Import your pictures into Immich using Immich-Go
- Those pictures will now be in nice folders for you, as dictated in the Immich settings
- Upload those pictures (now with exif data re-attached) to Proton.
Okay, dumb question… when I install Immich, it asks for a server endpoint URL. How do I get one of those? Do I need to purchase that from a web hosting service or is it something I can set up from any internet connected computer?
Can you point me to which type of installation you’re attempting? You should be able to safely ignore that part if you won’t be accessing it from the outside world. You’ll just be accessing it using the local IP address and port.
They probably installed the app and not the server.
Ah, good point.
Yes that’s in the app. In the server install instructions there is always a line like
I don’t understand, do I literally type that or insert something else there? Do I have to be on the same network or can I access it from anywhere?
Never tried it, but I would assume if you do a Google takeout of your Google Photos, the metadata would still be kept, and then you can upload that to Proton. Have you tried that yet?
Google takeout (or maybe Photos itself) actually trashes your metadata. BUT you can restore it (for money)!
When you get your Takeout zip files, you just drop them in here, don’t even unpack them.
