Is there a decent file attribute (date) conserving way to download your photos from Google?

[Dan Jenkins]

Summary: The JSON files contain ALL the metadata from EXIF info for each 
photo. You need to merge the JSON info back into the JPG files. There is 
a (purportedly) very good tool for doing that. I have not used the tool 
myself.

Hope this helps.

Here are supporting links:

  * Article on /How to Export Your Images From Google Photos Using Takeout/
    https://metadatafixer.com/learn/how-to-export-images-google-photos-takeout
  * The tool (EXIFTool) itself: https://exiftool.org/
  * Apple forum on the topic, with instructions:
    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253234040
  * EXIFTool forum with instructions for Google Takeout json files:
    https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php?topic=11064.0


On 2022-06-21 13:41, Mark Komarinski wrote:
> There should be EXIF metadata in each photo which should include the date taken.
>
> Should.
>
> -Mark
>
> On Jun 21, 2022 1:27 PM, Bruce Labitt<bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net>  wrote:
>
>      Recently got a message (well really quite a few) warning me that my
>      "free storage" on google is running out.  This, of course, is yet a new
>      way for Google to monetize all the free stuff that they had been
>      providing for a while.  I do have strong opinions on re-negging on
>      promises, but lets not go there.
>
>      Google apparently provides a way to extract your data, more or less.
>      You can export your data using "Google Takeout".  So I wanted to takeout
>      my photos, since it seemed they were the dominant storage hog.  I
>      exported my photos, and got 8 2GB zip files.  Google touched the files
>      and they all have today's date. This stinks because I usually sort on
>      date.  For some of the photos, the date is embedded in the file name.
>      For the earlier ones, the camera manufacturer didn't do that.  (Takeout
>      only exports the data, it does not delete it.)  In the export, it seems
>      there are json files for every jpg downloaded.  Seems like a lot of
>      clutter, what use are these json files?  Apparently they had some value
>      to Google, because they made them.
>
>      Is there some way to extract the photos from google with the dates intact?
>
>      If not, can the files be parsed for their date taken and the attribute
>      date reset to the taken date?  Say one were to do this in python, it
>      seems one could do this with PIL, and os.walk through the directories.
>      Not quite as sure about resetting the date attribute, but pretty sure it
>      can be done.  Seems like it could be an interesting exercise.  (Suppose
>      one could also extract the GPS info if available and further categorize
>      the photos.)
>
>      Are there any pitfalls to the the paragraph above?  Can any of you
>      suggest a better way to do this?
>
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