How to Export Photos from Adobe Lightroom to Google Photos?

One major problem you will face while working with Adobe Lightroom is the constant headache of finding a safe and secure location to store all the images which you have just processed with Lightroom. Most computer systems aren’t equipped to store a very big number of high-quality photos. 

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External hard drives offer a solution, but they can’t be totally banked upon. An external HDD might go corrupt, the user might delete the data unintentionally, or any other unforeseen eventuality might occur that leads to problems. That is why it is always necessary to have a backup of all your data somewhere safe.

Google Photos offers a great alternative by storing data on the cloud. In fact, if you allow Google Photos to save your photos in the high-resolution mode only, it can save an unlimited number of photos without any of the space being utilized counting towards your Google account’s storage space.

However, the problem with Google Photos is that it doesn’t offer any official plugin to export photos directly from Adobe Lightroom to your Google Photos account. This means you will have to manually upload all the photos to Google – a time consuming and frustrating job.

So, what is the workaround? In this article, we will discuss a few methods to export photos from Adobe Lightroom to Google Photos that save you time and money.

 

Exporting Lightroom Photos to Google Photos

Without further ado, let’s see what methods are available to us.

 

Lightroom to Google Photos – Plugin #1

The first method in our list is the Lightroom to Google Photos plugin.

Developed by Jeffery Friedl, the plugin is just what it is made to do. It lets you create an album on Google Photos and add up all your photos to that album.

Here is how to get started.

1. First of all, download the Lightroom to Google Photos plugin directly from Regex.info. The plugin is completely free to use.
2. When you open it for the first time, it will ask you to grant it access to Google Photos.
   

The developer states that Google might throw up a warning stating that the app you’re about to use isn’t verified. There is no need to panic as this is a standard procedure carried out by Google for newly launched apps.

If you’re still not comfortable, a great idea is to create a separate account just to upload Lightroom photos to Google Photos. The software will require the usual information that any other software might need before being integrated with your Google account.

Once the application has been successfully synced with Google Drive, it is time to add photos.

Once again, the developer of the plugin has advised that you should make a separate album from the software to upload photos otherwise it won’t work properly. This is because Google has very tight security protocols in place which means you cannot upload photos from third-parties to already created albums. So you have only one option left i.e. to create a separate album for your Adobe Lightroom images. Once that is done, it will automatically start to upload photos to the Google Photos new album. That’s it. Easy right?

Just a few more things you should know about the plugin. The Lightroom to Google Photos plugin will only work for Lightroom Classic and older versions. For newer versions, you will have to try another method.

 

Lightroom to Google Photos – Plugin #2

This is another handy option available in case the first one doesn’t work for you. This solution requires you to install a Lightroom plugin. Don’t worry it isn’t as technical as it sounds. Simply use this GitHub code of Lightroom to Google Photos plugin.

1. Add it to your Adobe Lightroom list of plugins.
2. You will get an option to upload photos directly to Google photos.

Note: The Lightroom plugin is not under active development anymore. This means that you shan’t expect any changes in the plugin.

Using the Lightroom to Google Photos plugin is fairly easy. Simply create a collection/album and then drag all the relevant photos that you want to upload to Google Photos, to the software screen. It will automatically start uploading the photos.

Note: The compression of Lightroom images is ridiculously low by default so you may have to increase it to at least 85 or more when uploading the photos otherwise their quality will be compromised.

Also, you may get an error if the album doesn’t match the name of the collection within the plugin. This is the same problem that we discussed in the first plugin.

 

Use the Google Photos App

There aren’t many options available for copying photos directly from Lightroom to Google Photos. However, you can use the Google Photos official app to upload photos directly from your PC. 

Here is how you do that:

1. Download the Google Photos app from this link and install it by executing the setup file.
2. Sync it with your Google Photos account.
3. Google will now provide you with one folder that you can use to copy photos from Lightroom to Google Photos.
4. Once you have a few photos available that you want to upload, simply copy them to the official Google Photos folder on your system.
5. You can also create albums to organize any photos you might have added to the Google Photos storage.

 

That’s it! You can now easily add photos directly to Google Photos from Lightroom by following the steps outlined in this blog post. Until next time, it’s goodbye from us.