(2024 Update) How to Move Photos from Google Drive to Google Photos

What Is the Difference between Google Drive and Google Photos

Google Drive is more of a storage platform with the organization of files in folders and support to hierarchy. You can upload any type of files including photos or videos and any other documents.

Google Photos offers an arrangement of the photos and videos in the gallery. You can do basic editing like crop and rotate. Also, photos can be arranged in the album, and searching for photos is way better than that in Google Drive.

So, Google Photos is limited only to photos and videos but has a plethora of features that resemble a photo viewer or editor. Google Drive is focused on all the file types and is not focused specifically on the photos and videos. So, Google Photos is the best among the two for storing photos.

How to Move Photos from Google Drive to Google Photos:

For better managing or more professional experience for photos, you may want to know how to transfer photos from Google Drive to Google Photos.

Below, we've outlined four easy and effective methods for this purpose!

Method 1: Downloading and Uploading

Downloading and uploading photos manully is one of the most common ways to move pictures saved in Google Drive to Google Photos.

Here are the steps involved for downloading photos from Google Drive and uploading them to Google Photos.

• At first, open your Google Drive and choose the photos or the folders which consist of the photos to move to Google Photos. You can select multiple photos or folders at once.

• After the selection of the photos or folders is complete, right-click and select "Download".

  
• You can navigate to the Google photos and upload the downloaded photos.

Though this method is uncomplicated, the steps are time-consuming and require ample storage for storing the downloaded files on the device.

Method 2: Connecting Google Photos to Google Drive

With a simple setting, you can connect Google Drive to Google Photos and have quick access to photos of Google Drive in Google Photos. Here are the steps involved:

• Click on the settings icon after you sign in to your Google Drive account. 

• For creating the Google photos folder, select the option next to it as shown in the screenshot below.

  
• Select all of those photos that you desire to move to Google Photos. Click the three-dot icon and then select "Move to".
• Select the folder for Google Photos that you just created and click the "Move" button.

Method 3: Add from Google Drive to Google Photos

Here are the steps of the third method to transfer photos from Google Drive to Google Photos.

• Visit the official website of Google Photos.

• Click "Upload" on the upper-right corner of the screen and then select the option "Google Drive".

  
• Select the photos on your Google Drive which you want to make available on Google Photos and click "Upload". Finally, you can have access to photos of Google Drive in Google photos.

Though this can be considered as one of the hassle-free and effective methods, you should consider knowing some of the limitations.

• You need to have access as the owner of the target folder and photos in the drive.
• Only photos greater than 256 px are supported for this method to work.
• The formats of the supported photos are jpg, raw, tiff, webp, and gif.

Method 4: Move Photos from Google Drive to Google Photos with iCareFiles

Apart from the above-mentioned methods, there is a direct method that can help you transfer files between cloud storages. WIth an online multicloud management platform named Tenorshare iCareFiles, you can move photos from Google Drive to Google Photos faster and easier than before.

iCareFiles allows you to merge and manage manage multiple cloud storage accounts such as Google Drive, Google Photos and DropBox on one platform. Not only can you transfer photos between Google Drive and Google Photos, but you can transfer Dropbox to Google Drive directly through this platform.

The steps for how to move pictures from Google Drive to Google Photos, Google Drive to Google Photos through iCareFiles are explained below:

• At first, you need to sign up for an iCareFiles account which is free for 30 GB of data traffic each month. After signing up successfully, log in to your account.

  

• Now, select "Google Drive" on the top menu and then follow the on-screen instructions to add your Google Drive account to iCareFiles.

  

• When the Google Drive account is added, click "Add Cloud Drive" on the right side of the panel and then select “Google Photos”.

  

• Click Transfer in the upper-left corner of the panel.Under Source Cloud Drive, you can either choose entire photo folders to transfer all the photos stored in the Google Drive in the cloud, or just select individual desired photo under a directory. Once seleted, click MIGRATE to start moving photos in Google Drive to Google Photos.

  

• After completing the task, you can click Task process > Completed > View to see if all pictures are transferred to the target folder of Google Photos.

  

Alternative Tool to Move Photos from iPhone to PC

The presence of many high-resolution images consumes a lot of device storage. Most of us have really limited storage on iPhones in comparison to our PC. So, if we export photos present on the iPhone to PC, it will ease the load on your phone. One of the best alternative tools to move photos from iPhone to PC is Tenorshare iCareFone. This tool helps to export the photos from iPhone to PC in just a click. It supports iOS 14.5.1 and all the variants of iPhone 12 as well.

Steps to move photos from iPhone to PC using Tenorshare iCareFone are:

• At first, download the Tenorshare iCareFone and then install it on your PC. Then, connect your iPhone to the PC. If you see the pop-up "Trust this computer?", tap "Trust". Enter the iPhone's passcode (if you have set it) for trusting the connected PC.

  

• After connecting the device, from the main interface click the option "One- Click Export Photos to PC" among the three options.

  

• All the photos will start to transfer automatically. The folder with the transferred photos opens after the completion of the transfer. Click 'Open Folder' if the destination folder does not open automatically.

  

Summary

We hope this guide has provided you with information on how to move photos from Google Drive to Google Photos. We highly recommend the third method of adding the photos from Google Drive to Google Photos and the fourth method of using Tenorshare iCareFiles as per your convenience.