2 new Photo Upload Tips

[MortenCopenhagen]

Service info

Back in May 2019, I sought help in finding the Best workflow for uploading a huge batch of photos. Today I will try to answer by sharing 2 new tips for uploading larger batches of photos to Google Maps. If you only upload a few photos now and then, this post is irrelevant. This post looks long, mainly because of the many screenshots. Read the text, and dwell into the screenshots only if needed. Here we go:

2 challenges to overcome

When I visited Okayama in October, I had time to photograph about 80 storefronts. Now, a month later it is time to get the images uploaded to Google Maps. This entails two huge obstacles that I’ve been dreading.

Obstacle #1:

The photos from Okayama are now way down in my list of photos. So if I were to scroll down and find them individually between my many photos, this would take forever.

Obstacle #2:

Some of the stores in Japan only have signage in Japanese, and I don’t read or speak any Japanese. So it will be difficult for me to find the correct pins on Google Maps.

I just found some smart solutions to these 2 challenges.

How to avoid scrolling for hours

First I fix the light and crop them in Google Photos to make all the photos look their very best. Then the images from Okayama are moved into a new Google Photos Album (this is a “folder” or “collection” of photos). I named the album Okayama.

Please note, that you need to use a desktop computer for this trick to work.

I let the photo order in the album dictate the order in which I upload the images to Google Maps. Immediately after an image is successfully uploaded to Google Maps, I remove the image from the Album. This helps me to keep perfect track of my progress and Google Photos will let me know how many images are left to deal with.

Here is the workflow steps 1 - 7:

Step 1:

In the Google Photos album, I look for the next image:

As you can see the next store is named earth (blue arrow). (The very first image shows the entrance to the shopping mall called AEON Mall. This is where most of my photos are from. So I want to limit my search to the shopping mall.)

Step 2:

Then find and open the place sheet for the AEON Mall in Google Maps:

Step 3:

Scroll down to find the Directory search field as seen below and enter “earth”.

This will limit the search to shops inside the Mall. After pressing ENTER, you will see this:

Yes, this looks like the correct pin. I recognize the storefront from the small image and the store name (although many keywords incorrectly were stuffed into the name field!).

Step 4:

Now open the place sheet by clicking on the store name.

Step 5:

Scroll down to find “Add a photo” as shown below.

Step 6: (This is where the magic begins!)

Instead of using the normal “Upload” tab, I click on the Google Photos tab (just to the left of “Upload”.)

Then you will see this:

Click on Albums.

We then see this:

Then double-click on the Okayama album to open it.

Yes! Here is my “earth” image! Just click on the image and finish off by hitting Select as shown below.

As you can see the earth-image was found without scrolling down for hours. It takes a lot of clicks, but the next time you click on “Add a photo” the overview of Google Photos will open as the default.

Step 7:

Now return to the Google Photos album (I have it in another browser tab) to remove the “earth” image from the album.

Open the photo

Click the 3-dot menu icon (top right) as shown below:

Then click “Remove from album” as shown below:

Finally, confirm that you want to remove the image from the album.

On to the next one!

This trick can save a lot of time. Please try it and let me know if you like it or if I failed to explain something.

Now on to the second obstacle.

How to find the correct Maps pin when you can’t read the store name

Many shops in AEON Mall use English on their storefront. But not all of them do. Here is one such example:

I have no idea what this store is selling or what the name sign says.

This is where Google Lens comes in super handy. Let me walk you through the steps needed to find the pin for this mystery store on Google Maps.

Step A

Open the image in Google Photos, then right-click on the image to select Search image with Google as shown below.

Step B

Now a right-side panel will open showing you the following:

Step C

Now click on Text just under the image. This will take you to this:

Step D

Use your mouse to mark the store name on the small image, and hit Copy. Now the Japanese name “八天堂” is on your clipboard.

Step E

Now open AEON Mall on Google Maps and scroll down to find the Directory search field to Paste the text from Google Lens as shown below.

Then press Enter to see:

I’m still clueless by seeing the miniature image and the name Hattendo. Could the be the correct pin? So I clicked the text Hattendo to open this business. Then I get this:

Bingo! From the cover photo, I can now easily see that this is the bakery I have been looking for. This is the correct pin.

So Google Lens is your best friend when you need to find the pin for photos from areas where your language skills are poor or non-existent.

Google Lens is also available in the Google Photos mobile app as can be seen below.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful.

Cheers

Morten

[WilfriedB]

Great description and solution @MortenCopenhagen !

It confirms my own convincing, the more we post to Google Maps, the more we need to organize it. Not only when we bring many pictures from a single trip, but it also applies to places, we visit more than once or often. Personally I am also interested to be able track back when did I visit which places and what did I post x years ago - I might want to change or delete something later.

Using Google Photos is a clever solution, since Google doesn’t help us for that and even makes it more difficult by providing multiple ways to post images, without being able easily to avoid duplicates as we discussed in Please don’t suggest we upload duplicate pics .

My attempt for a solution is slightly different:

Although I do use Google Photos* to share with friends and family, I choose to maintain a database of all photos I ever took (262 k, as we speak), along with information where I shared them. Again, as you said correctly, the key is “you need to use a desktop computer for this trick to work.” Only recently, I decided to also keep rack of my posts to Maps - still working on refining the details. For now, I record the shortlinks (permalinks) to the POI and to my review for each of the photos posted.

• 743 albums with a total of 123,596 pictures

[MortenCopenhagen]

Thanks for your comments, @WilfriedB

It sounds like a huge amount of work. I think I’m too lazy to go to that length. Instead, I keep my fingers crossed that Google Maps one day will provide the much-needed tools to manage our Maps contributions more easily. This includes sorting and filtering all our contributions.

Permalinks are on Connect only, not Maps, right?

All the best

Morten

[WilfriedB]

@MortenCopenhagen

Reg.: “huge amount of work”

It is indeed work, but once I found and streamlined my workflow, it is not that huge. Better than scrolling back for hours, as you said above

Reg.: “Permalinks are on Connect only, not Maps, right?”

No, in several places in Maps, you can select share and then “Copy Link”. You can do so for a POI, a review or a photo. The difficulty is, It also includes the context, i.e. the link refers to the page, where you requested it. Depending on that, you always find a photo, but may or may not be able to delete the photo later. Here an example for a restaurant:

[MortenCopenhagen]

I see, @WilfriedB

I call those short links and not permalinks. This is not important.

The problem is that short links to photos and reviews are not compatible across the 3 platforms. Only short links to places work across all three platforms.

As long as you stay on the same platform, you will not have issues.

I hope Google will make the short links to all contributions work across all platforms.

All the best and thanks

Morten

[Amiran]

Great guiding post @MortenCopenhagen Thanks for sharing.

I used to upload by this method when the storage of the Maps was the same as with Photos. But after that, I thought why should I upload them to Photos and again to Maps? So, I upload them directly and only to Maps. But you brought a good reason to do this again! It is very useful if we have many unorganized photos.

[WilfriedB]

@MortenCopenhagen reg.: “short links to photos and reviews are not compatible across the 3 platforms”:

The links itself ar compatible, however:

• Sharing from the Android app, it adds some text in front of the link, e.g. "Sieh dir diese Rezension von Pegelhaus auf Maps an https://goo.gl/maps/4mRGvSTcDsHiAPaU7 ". If you ignore the leading text, it works under windows.
• I didn’t find a way to use the short link from Windows inside of the Google Maps app, however inserting it into a Android Browser works and Chrome even suggests to reroute to the app.

But for my purpose, one platform is sufficient anyway.

[MortenCopenhagen]

Thanks for your comments, @Amiran .

Normally, the transfer of photos from Google Photos to Google Maps happens without downloading the images to your device so uploading to Google photos first will not increase your data/internet costs.

Cheers

Morten

[MortenCopenhagen]

@WilfriedB

Try sharing a link to an individual photo from Desktop to Android or IOS this shows only the place and not the individual photo.

While testing right now, I noticed that direct links to reviews shared from desktop to Android and ISO started working, This is amazing. And news to me.

All the best

Morten

[ErmesT]

Thanks for this post, @MortenCopenhagen , that is clearly explaining step by step the procedure. I am using exactly the procedure (editing, adding to an album, searching with lens) with only a small shortcut for photos taken in areas with less density of businesses: from Google Photos on desktop I open Maps to see the position of the photo according to the geotag, and I explore the POIs around the pin. 50% of the times I am lucky, and I can skip the search with Google Lens

[Amiran]

You’re right @MortenCopenhagen

But still, it increases the tasks. One step to upload to Photos (if auto-sync is off), One step to connect them to Maps, and one step to remove them from Photos to prevent storage from being full. Still, it might be worth doing it if I have lots of unorganized photos to upload.

[ShailendraOjha]

today I saw the " times of India "newspaper gadget article on how to use Google photos in Google News feed in my Google pixel 6 mobile. i share the snapshot to you .

@MortenCopenhagen

@TusharSuradkar

@jayasimha78

[MortenCopenhagen]

@ErmesT

Great point, @ErmesT . But in the Japanese cities the pins per square meter is extremely high

I think the correctness percentage of the guesses after “Share to Maps” from Google Photos has gone up by a lot over the past few months. So, I too use this method when it works well.

All the best

Morten

[MortenCopenhagen]

I see what you mean, @Amiran

I have auto sync set to ON (only for wifi though), and I have 100 GB on my account (a paid service), but I use storage saver mode, so with my current contribution level it will last me another 2-3 years. I also normally remove the unedited versions of my photos.

Cheers

Morten

[Amiran]

Yes, @MortenCopenhagen I wish Google would never expire that 1TB, So I was able to upload all photos there

By the way, I forgot to say your shot of the Aeon Mall is brilliant.

[MortenCopenhagen]

Thanks, @Amiran

There was a pedestrian bridge (no drone) and the time of day was perfect.

Cheers

Morten

[RosyKohli]

@MortenCopenhagen

Thanks for sharing this information of tips ,2 new photo upload

[WilfriedB]

@Amiran and @MortenCopenhagen reg.: “One step to upload to Photos (if auto-sync is off) …”:

I do have auto-sync set on, however synchronizing only one single folder (F:\GoogleAlbums). Only those photos I want to appear in an album, I export with lower resolution (faster upload!) into a sub-folder of GoogleAlbums. Then Google Drive synchronizes quickly in the background. A little later, I move the uploaded photos into a (usually new) album. To do the latter, this link is extremely helpful: https://photos.google.com/search/tra It shows you all uploaded photos day by day with the most recent at top.

Regarding the cost for storage in Google Drive, it is important not to upload in full size (‘original quality’). In the settings you’ll find the option “Saving Storage”.

[shunsader]

@MortenCopenhagen ,

Thanks for spending the time to document your method of organizing, submitting, and deciphering photo locations for your photos. It’s something I’ve struggled with in the short time I’ve worked on this project.

You mentioned above “I think I’m too lazy to go to that length.”, and for me, moving photos off of my iPhone and then managing them somewhere else is even too labor intensive. Thus, I’ve found that iPhone photo tools are more than adequate to crop, adjust color, contrast, etc, and submit straight from my phone. Since I don’t really need to keep photos of store fronts, the VAST majority of them get deleted. The ones I keep are initially tagged as “Favorites” so I remember to not delete them after submitting.

As for how to keep from scrolling through more recent photos, I use the “Hide” feature that iPhone provides. Simply Select all the photos more current than the block of photos you’d like to submit, then choose “HIDE” located near the bottom of the list of choices. Now the camera roll shows your photo session as the most current, and submissions are handled the same way you process…most current get submitted first. I ALSO look ahead when submitting to see which storefront is next by selecting it, then clicking on the selection to enlarge the photo so I can read its name, then uncheck it, remembering what business to locate next. Once I’ve submitted a number of photos and it takes too long for me find the next block, I confirm that the last 2 or 2 businesses have gone from “Pending” to “Recently Added”, and start deleting photos (or could HIDE them so they’ll be saved for later). Once deleted or hidden, I resume submission and repeat this process as many times as necessary until completed. After submission is done, I choose “All Photos”, then “Albums”, scroll towards bottom and choose “Hidden”, then “Select”, choose photos to ‘unhide’, and your camera roll is restored. Beautiful photos of store fronts that you’ve saved are now stored as favorites. From here, it’s easy to select your favorite store front photos, and move them to their own folder/album.

Of the 23k plus photos I’ve shot, I’ve saved around 500.

Still searching for a better way though…but it needs to be quick. - Steve

[indahnuria]

Super handy and very informative as always @MortenCopenhagen . I do have similar issues with tons of photos added to my phone on daily basis (I know, I just can’t resist that ). After Japan, I went to South Island in NZ; Rarotonga in Cook Islands & many interesting places in Wellington. It gives me a headache when it comes to adding photos, videos and reviews on Google Maps as I also tend to add them at later stage.

but thanks to you and your handy tips & tricks, now I can do it faster and more manageable.

cheers for that & arigato