In the early days of cloud photo storage, Google Photos (and its predecessor, Picasa) seemed like a perfect solution for backing up our precious memories. With APIs similar to Google Drive, it was easy to use Google Photos as a backup solution. However, as time passed, many of us, myself included, began relying on it as our primary photo storage.
Fast forward to today, and I’ve come to a stark realization: I’m completely locked into the Google Photos ecosystem. The old Picasa APIs are gone, and the current ones come with significant limitations, including stripping EXIF data and resizing images. This realization led me on a journey to export my entire photo library and transition to a self-hosted solution using Immich server.
In this post, I’ll outline the process I used to liberate my photos from Google’s grasp and regain control over my digital memories.
(more…)