Lightroom To Google Photos Transfer And Removal Of Duplicate Images

Adobe Lightroom is much more than an image viewer. It offers a combination of editing features from Photoshop and other Adobe-family products. You can create or import albums, manipulate and organize your photos, all in a single application. If you’re a digital photographer or a graphics designer, it’s likely that you’re already using Lightroom. You could have a library of hundreds of thousands of photographs captured over years. The problem arises when you need to transfer your huge image library to Google Photos. This is because Lightroom does not offer an in-house functionality to automatically transfer them for you. In this tutorial, we’ll discuss the various ways to accomplish this task with ease. Read on..

Product Spotlight: PictureEcho Duplicate Image Finder is an intelligent Duplicate Photo Removal software made by our company, Sorcim Technologies. It can find exact and similar photos easily. Download it now to clean up your photos collection.

Step 1: Remove Duplicate Photos from your Lightroom Library

Before we head on to the actual transfer process, it’s important to get rid of redundancy. Over years of using Lightroom, you could have accumulated hundreds of duplicate photos in your library. Not only do these duplicates take your storage, they make the transfer process very lengthy. We’ll fix the duplicates to make the transfer process faster and efficient.

What causes photos duplication?

Duplicate images are inevitable. No matter how you use Lightroom, sooner or later you acquire new duplicates. Human errors are a key reason behind duplication. Other factors such as automated backup software, online sync clients, also contribute to it.

Simple human errors while copying and transferring your images can cause unwanted copies of the original images. Let’s take an example of your images library.

Do you occasionally transfer pictures from your digital camera? Even though you may have selected only newer photos to transfer, some of them may already exist on your hard disk. Transferring the same photos to different locations can eat up your valuable storage. Automatic file sync clients are also to be blamed. If you’re using an automatic file syncing software to sync files across multiple devices, they could add up more duplicates. Automatic backup software can create multiple copies of your existing files.

Why are duplicate files so difficult to identify?

Duplicate files are difficult to identify manually mainly because of the following two reasons:

1. Your hard disk may contain too many files with the same name at different locations. Even though these files may appear to you as duplicates at first glance, they need not be. Some of these files may contain unique data. This is why the filename factor alone is not sufficient enough to identify your duplicates. Blindly deleting files without verifying their data can cause you terrible data loss.
2. Another possibility is that duplicate data may be found in cross-file types. File “A.png” and “B.jpeg” are two different image file types. Even though they may appear as two different image files, they may actually contain the same picture.

Remove Duplicate Lightroom Photos

When you add photos to your Lightroom library, it builds  a catalog file. We’ll use a specialized Lightroom duplicate scanner PictureEcho to detect and clean your duplicate Lightroom images using this Catalog file. PictureEcho will use industry-standard algorithms to batch compare your photos and identify duplicates. It is a fully automated software with tons of features to help you fix duplicates within minutes.

PictureEcho Features:

Automated & User friendly: PictureEcho gives you an option to select duplicate images in bulk. Use the automatic file selection patterns of your choice to select hundreds of duplicate files at once.

Fully Customizable: Different users may have different requirements. Some users might prefer to scan the entire hard disk for duplication, while others may prefer to scan select directories. PictureEcho gives you an option to add multiple folders, drives of hard disk

100% Accuracy: Worried about deleting the wrong files? Fear not, PictureEcho’s Exact Match feature uses industry-standard algorithms to compare your images. The use of these smart algorithms ensures the Exact Match results are 100% accurate.

In-house Preview: The previewing feature makes it incredibly easy to review your files. You don’t need to open files separately. Just use the previewing feature to view your images or play your clips.

Steps

1. Download Lightroom duplicate photo scanner PictureEcho and install it.
2. Before we run PictureEcho scan, it’s important that Adobe Lightroom is closed. PictureEcho cannot process duplicates when they are already in use.
3. In the main interface of PictureEcho, switch to the Adobe Lightroom tab.
4. Now, you need to select a scan method. Use the Exact Match to find photos that are identical in nature. Use Similar Match to find images that are visually similar in nature.
5. If you’ve selected the Similar Match option, PictureEcho will display you the Similarity Settings option on your screen. If you click it, the program will display the following similarity levels:
   • Level 1: These are the photos taken within a time span of 30 seconds. Use this option to find a considerable amount of duplicate files and free-up maximum storage.
   • Level 2: These are the photos taken within 1 minute time span.
   • Level 3: Use this option to find duplicate photos that were taken within a 60 minute time span.
   • Level 4: PictureEcho will not take the time criteria into consideration. But you’ll need to review the files carefully before taking any action.
6. You really don’t need to change them.
7. Click on Start Search to conduct the scan.
8. After the scanning is finished, you’ll be able to see the list of duplicate files.
9. Click on the Select Duplicates button. Here are some of the image selection patterns:
   • Retain smaller/ bigger images in each group: Use these options to choose whether to retain bigger/ smaller images in each group. Any files that you un-mark are retained.
   • Retain low/ high resolution images:  High resolution images may offer better picture quality but take more storage. Low resolution images might take lower storage but offer reduced picture quality. Use this option to retain low/ high resolution images.
   • Retain newest/ oldest images in each group: You can mark or un-mark images based on their modification date. Choose whether to keep most recently modified images or the least modified images.
   • Select by Location: If you ever need to mark or un-mark files in specific directories, this can be a handy option. Use this option to keep files in directories of your choice.
10. Click on Select Action and choose one of the following options:
    1. Move to folder: Use this option if you’re busy and don’t have the time to evaluate each file. You can review your files later and delete those you don’t need.
    2. Delete: Use this option to permanently delete all marked files. Remember, the action cannot be undone.

Step 2: Transfer Photos to Google Photos

Unfortunately, Adobe Lightroom does not give a direct way to transfer your photos to Google Photos. There are two alternative ways to accomplish it:

Option 1: Using a third-party free plug-in

The first option is to download a third-party plugin. There are many handy plugins available to transfer your Lightroom images to Google Photos. Jeffrey’s Export to Google Photos Lightroom Plugin does this job incredibly, all for free. Be sure to update the plug-in on a regular basis. Older versions of the plug-in may become obsolete and may not function correctly as Google APIs change quite frequently.

The process is fairly simple.

1. Download Jeffrey’s Export to Google Photos Lightroom Plugin.
2. Login to Google Photos on your computer’s default browser. Make sure that you’re logging to the same account that you want to use to transfer your photos.
3. Launch Adobe Lightroom.
4. Install the transfer plug-in and open it.
5. In the Export dialog, select Google Photos as the destination.
6. The plugin will ask you to authenticate with Google Photos. Click on Authenticate to Google Photos.
7. At this step, Google will warn you about unverified apps and developers. If you trust the app and its developer, go ahead and click on Advanced. Select the Go to regex.info option.
8. Google will now prompt you to approve account access permissions. Review the permissions carefully. Click Allow if you agree.
9. Now, Google will redirect you to the original page in the Step 5. As your Google Photos account is verified, your account status will appear as logged in.
10. In the Export Location, look for Google Photos: Tools.
11. Type in a destination album name. The plugin will automatically create a new album (Example: My Lightroom Photos) in your Google Photos account. If you’re thinking of transferring to an existing album in your account, unfortunately it’s not possible to do so. According to the developer of the plugin, Google does not permit them to transfer to the existing albums that were not created by the plugin.
12. The plugin also offers plenty of other optional settings to change the file naming patterns, output sharpening, metadata, watermarking, image sizing, and other settings. Believe me, you don’t really need to change them if your only aim is to transfer your photos. All these settings are optional, but they can be a great help if you’re simultaneously looking to watermark your photos. There are handy options to optimize your images so they take less space in your Google Photos account.
13. Now, hit Export and the transfer process should start automatically.

Option 2: Export & upload your photos manually

Although the automatic transfer plugin makes the task incredibly easy, not everyone is comfortable with trying some random third-party plug-in. Here, we’ll discuss how to export your Lightroom photos and manually upload them to Google Photos.

Step 1: Export Lightroom photos

1. Open Lightroom, click the Library on the upper right.
2. Select all the photos you like to export. You may use the Shift + Click combination to select photos in sequence, or Ctrl + Click to select random photos in one go.
3. The status bar will display the selected photo count.
4. Click the Export button on the sidebar on the left.
5. This opens up a new Export dialog.
6. In the Export to drop-down box, select Specific folder.
7. Click on the Choose button and select a destination directory on your hard drive.
8. Just like the plug-in we discussed earlier, Lightroom shows you optional settings to change Image format and photo quality.
9. Set the Quality to 100% and select your desired Image format (JPEG, for example).
10. Click on Export and Lightroom will start exporting your photos straightway.

Step 2: Manually upload on Google Photos

1. Login to Google Photos on your PC.
2. Click the Menu icon on the left.
3. If you like to store transferred photos into a separate new album, select the Albums option in the sidebar on the left. Click the Create Album icon on the top right corner and name your new photo album.
4. Click the Photos option in the sidebar.
5. Click the Upload icon on the top right corner, and select Computer from the drop-down menu options.
6. Choose your Lightroom exported folder, and click on Open.
7. Google Photos will start uploading your photos in bulk.