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9:02 pm

I wasn’t sure where to put this so move the thread if this is the wrong place.
When I use Blogger I bring in photos from Google Photos. The description in Blogger is Albums and Archived Photos. Sounds good but I get all sorts of additional “garbage” photos that aren’t in an Album or Archived.
I finally figured out what is going on but can’t figure out how to fix it. All the “garbage” pictures are coming from Shared. Blogger is picking up all the photos in shared, I didn’t see this documented anyplace and don’t feel Blogger should be doing this. Bad behavior. Every photo I have ever shared is in this section, hundreds.
I can individually delete them from shared but can’t figure out how to mass delete them from shared. Do you have any ideas? Until I looked in the shared area I didn’t know Photos even did this. Why I can’t rationalize. I look at this as just clutter with no purpose that I can discern
Google should really correct this or give us a mass delete option.
Sue, I agree that the albums that show up in Blogger when you click Insert image, from Google Album Archive – are a total mess. If you’ve figured out where some of the ‘garbage’ is coming from – you’re ahead of me! The only thing I can add is a further piece of complication: Google Album Archive is actually a place, https://get.google.com/albumarchive/. It is the behind-the-scenes storage area for all your photos. You, and only you, can see them there – but there is no organization whatsoever, and there are no tools for doing anything with them. You mention that you’re deleting some of them. I really think it’s best to leave this mess alone – there could be unintended consequences.
If you’re bringing in pictures to blogger, and they’re recent pictures, try using the “From your phone” option instead of Album Archive. See if that’s any better.
It shouldn’t matter if you took the photos with your SLR. As long as they were uploaded to your Google Photos, they should show up in the section labeled “from your phone” Let me know if that works for you.
Nothing should change for you on 7/10 unless you were uploading only to Google Drive and expecting them to be synced over to Google Photos because of the Google Photos setting. Did you read the article I just sent out?
7:09 pm

We are in Alaska and internet is dicey. I have done some more research and according to Google Photos I can delete the “garbage” and the photos will still be there. The problem seems to be that if you share a photo Google Photos automatically calls/creates an album for it. Besides this bad behavior there is no way of mass deleteing “garbage” albums. I have tried on my laptop and a tablet, on both it is a one-by-one situation though on the laptop it is significantly faster.
I have a lot of “busy” work.
I will be more mindful of my sharing of photos from now on. Once the housekeeping is done I’ll need to see if sharing in a different way doesn’t create my “garbage”.
You shouldn’t have to be careful about what you share …
I agree that it’s messy calling everything you share an “album” – I’ve always hated that. BUT, quite some time ago those “albums” were taken out of the Albums tab and given a tab of their own called “Sharing” So – if you shared one photo with me right now – it should NOT show up in your Albums. It’s in the Sharing section.
If that’s not the case with you, then you need to update your Google Photos.
Yep – I hear ya. The Blogger “from Album Archive” is literally from get.google.com/albumarchive/ – which is the leftover combination of Picasaweb albums and all Google PHotos – it is a mess, but it does show current named albums along with all the garbage ‘shared’ albums.
Did you try using the Blogger “from your phone” option?
If that doesn’t work for you and From Album archive is too hard to find what you want, I recommend doing a little bit of preparation. In Google Photos, make an album called Pics for Blog – and put the photos you want in there. Then, in Blogger, use the From Album archive and find the Pics for Blog album. If it has even just one current photo in it, it should show up on the first screenful of albums.
Let me know.
AS for updating – you’re right, no updating on the web version. I was thinking about the mobile app.
One last thought – you could always download the photos you want for your blog to a folder on your computer. (Open photo in Google Photos, click 3-dot menu, Download – specify a special folder for Blog photos) Then, in Blogger – use the Upload option rather than album archive or from phone.
12:34 pm

Thanks for the ideas and confirmation Photos is a mess. My latest routine is I make an Album for each day since I have a blog entry for each day. This keeps things a bit organized. I have also cleared out my “shared” albums. That helped a lot. Once I am done posting the blog day entry I go back and delete the album I created for that day. Annoying bit of housekeeping but so far it is working out OK.
I get extremely frustrated with Google and Amazon. Both have some great products(Photos and Kindle LIbrary) but it seems they develop the product and feel they are done, very few improvements at all. In my mind if you are going to create a product, put all the time, effort and $$ into its development there needs to be a longer term commitment to the product. End of rant………..
Couldn’t you accomplish the same thing with less work by making an album for the month? That’s what I do, and I like having my monthly photo albums – I keep them. Sometimes I just want to see the pictures, not read the blog. And I can add a few more pictures than I use in the blog.
As for Google improving their product, I hear you. I’ve been waiting for improvements to the album organization since the beginning, 4 years ago, but – being on the Google Product Expert team I see firsthand how many people they have and how hard they work to keep improving Google Photos, just not the features I want! It’s an unfathomable task to have a product used by nearly a billion users! Most of whom have very different needs than ours.
4:28 pm

I find when we are in travel mode I take way too many pictures to be able to manage a month at a time. Yesteray we did an 8 hour boat trip to th Kenai Fjord. Between the 2 of us 400 pictures for just that day!!
I hear you about Google but I would think a majority of people would like to be better organized.
400 photos in one day! Wow. You’re awesome!
but, that’s exactly my point about albums, just pick the best ones of those 400 – or if you can’t figure out the best, just get a sampling.
For example, we took over 3,000 photos on our trip to Australia/New Zealand. We started an album on day one and just added our best each day. By the time we flew home, we had an album with 313 photos. That is the album I go to for any photos for my blog posts on the trip.
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