Delete duplicate pictures in Google Photos.

Delete duplicate pictures in Google Photos | Thomas' Miniblog
I always tend to over complicate things… but here’s my 2 cents.. I have duplicates that I want to eliminate. I also know there was a period where I was saving full resolution (via Picasa) to Google when I didn’t need it. I ALSO know there are some of those special ones that I want to keep as full resolution while 95% can be reduced to “High quality” to save room.

Here’s my plan.. its not an easy one, but at least I wont have to find the majority of duplicates:

– Start with: sync everything up to Google Photos. tablets, Cell phones, and PC’s

– (if not already done) hook up Google Drive on the PC.

– verify/modify Google photos on the PC to only back up Documents -My Photos and do NOT include the Google Drive path

– In Google Drive settings on the web ENABLE the “show Google Photos on your Google Drive” setting.
this will begin a full download of everything Google Photos thinks is yours and keep it in its own folder under Drive.
Make sure you have enough room, and let it complete which may take days or more.

– When that’s done, disconnect Google Drive.

– Delete EVERYTHING from Google Photos on line. This will cascade down to your PC, Tablets and cell phones.

– When that’s done, Disconnect Google Photos

– Move your disconnected Documents – Google Drive – Photos back to your Documents – My Photos.

– Start up Picasa (or whatever photo manipulation organizer you want to use) and take your time.
Look for Duplicates and eliminate, if you want to get into cropping and color correcting, do this now.
Don’t forget to save the edited photos back to your My Photos.
Do everything you want off line.

– Lastly search for large files and copy the ones you want to keep as large format into another hidden folder not under photos.
In 2 steps we convert the original location down to smaller size.

– Re-enable Google photos and let it re-upload everything in your My Photos folder to the cloud.

– Once that’s done, you can use Google Photos on the web to go into Photos settings and “recover storage” which will down convert all your photos to the “high quality” setting (<3MB per photo) then set your default to high quality. From that point on you will only need to move the photos you want to keep in original (large) format to somewhere other than your regular folders on your phone. Maybe disable Google Drive from showing in Photos and vice versa.. then do a copy on your phone to Google drive any time you want to keep the large format. ---------------------- Is there a way to copy photos from google photos to an external hard drive? - Google Product Forums
Is there a way to copy photos from google photos to an external hard drive?
- If all you want is a backup just use Google Takeout.
It will create a zip file (or files depending on the number of photos) and download them to your PC.
Move that zip archive to your external drive and you should be set.
Extract them from the zip archive only if you need to use them on your PC.

Unfortunately you can download only 500 at once!