Uploading albums from Apple Photos to Dropbox for Back up

[kb1858]

Hi

I am trying to sort out cloud storage for my photos.  They are on Apple Photos on a Mac running Sierra 10.12.6.  I already have an external harddrive on which they are regularly backed up.  What I want to do is copy all of my photos and videos and have them on a cloud.  I want to export them in albums/ year groupings and I don't want the "library" to transfer to dropbox as I know that doesnt work and can lead to photo loss.  I want to keep all of the original Photos library on my desktop.

What Ive been doing is creating albums in Photos, selecting then dragging and dropping into folders I have created in Dropbox in my finder on my Mac.  Does this just copy them or am I moving the original from the Photos library to the Dropbox?  

I don't like the way ICloud works so I'm trying to find a solution for that unlikely but possible total failure of local harddrive and local backup.  I also want the possibility to delete things locally but still have a backup if I've messed up.

Thanks for any insights

Kate

[Jay · Accepted solution]

Hi Kate, most likely this won’t work since the Photos app is a database of its own (hence why we don’t recommend syncing it to Dropbox).

However, in Photos, you should be able to export the album, or the photos out of that app into the Dropbox folder. This will copy the photos, not just move them, so you will be duplicating the space used on your Mac the more photos you copy over.

Hope this clarifies matters!

[kb1858]

Thanks Jay that's helpful.  I guess I just need to drag and drop them all back and start again....

Thanks!

Kate

[cj9]

Hi Kate, I have the same issue and find a way. Did you do follow the suggestion? Are you satisfied with it? What about when you add some photo to old albums. Do you just export it again? It is still a very manual process. I even consider to move away from apple photo to a different program. But Google i.e. does not have the same functionality.

[Snappy23]

Photos Takeout, an app on the Mac app store, does exactly this. It can export album-wise, year-wise or moment/date-wise folders from Photos on Mac to Dropbox, other cloud services, Mac or external HD. I use it on Big Sur, but it works on older macOSs too. It can also export incrementally i.e. photos added and edited since the last export.

If this works for you, please mark this as the correct answer so that it can also help others.

PS: You can also export one album at a time with Photos app by selecting all photos in the album, then clicking File / Export in the top menu (Don't use Drag & drop because it'll export JPG versions and exclude some of the metadata).

[kb1858]

Thanks Snappy that's helpful.  I'll take a look.  The dropbox solution took up too much local disk space so I went with Apple photos and several external harddrive backups in the end.

[joybliss]

Yes, I am doing the same trying to send albums to other users.  Transferring to other users that are PC, metadata isn't transferring with the picture?  Not sure if it transfers to Mac users, haven't tested.  Pulling my hair out on this metadata/Mac problem.  Don't want to spend hours on my 1000's of pictures tagging, adjusting times, locations, titles (many are old scanned pictures).  Any help or direction appreciated.   Joyce

[Snappy23]

@joyblissSee my tip above, I had posted it last year but just updated it. As for your scanned photos, if you have added titles, dates, descriptions, keywords and locations using Photos or another metadata editor program, this app exports them. But I noticed that for videos, it doesn't export keywords.

[joybliss]

thanks for the quick reply - I'll give it a try!

[JAFDMD]

Hello,

I want to transfer all my photos in Apple photos app to Dropbox.  (I realize that the album format present in the app unfortunately cannot not be duplicated in the folder I have created in Dropbox for the transfer)  Is it better to export the photos via the export function in apple Photos app or to use the upload feature in Dropbox?  Is there any difference in the quality of the photo that ends up in Dropbox?  Thanks in advance for your reply.