How can I backup the albums I create on my phone

[AC Question]

I'm looking for a way to backup photos and preserve the albums that I have created. Google photos online only backs up the photos in chronological order. I don't mind if it's an app or another storage location, i just need photos to be organised and for that to be backed up in the same hierarchy.
Thanks

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! This may not be what you're looking for, but how about creating and organizing albums within the Google Photos app? Albums in Google Photos are essentially just groupings of the existing photos in your entire Google Photos library. Albums you create can then be accessed from any device that's logged into your Google account. This works best if you're backing up all of your photos to your Google Photos in the cloud.

 

[JC No name]

Thanks for the welcome.
That does not appear to be the case.
When creating photo albums in Google photo app and syncing that to the app. I cannot see the albums in the web browser. Another post on here suggests that it is not possible or a feature of Google photos to do that.

"Paolo Amoroso said:
Hi JL, Google photos doesn't unfortunately preserve any original folder structure when uploading the photos. All the uploaded photos are added to your library and you have to manually sort them into albums on Google Photos."

Mitchlambertuk said:.
Google are morphing into Apple and have decided that they know what's best, and if we don't agree we need to just suck it up. Trying to use a web browser to upload videos and pictures and put them into dedicated folders is a farce. The option of using the new uploader that just chucks all the photos into a giant online mess organised by date is preposterous to anyone that wants to look back at a specific event etc.

In particular, the bold section is where I'm at!! This person is suggesting dropbox, but still seems the organisation has to be done on the PC...we want the albums on the phone to be recreated in the desktop album with the same content as the phone.

 

[B. Diddy]

The way to do it is to upload all of your photos first to the Google Photos cloud, then organize your albums afterwards.

I might be misunderstanding -- when you created some albums already, do you mean the Albums feature of Google Photos, or do you mean separate storage directories? The Albums feature is found on the main Google Photos app screen, at the bottom right. The separate storage directories would be seen if you tap Menu>Device Folders (but that's not the kind of Album I'm talking about).

 

[ManiacJoe]

To answer the original question....

The albums on your phone are just file system folders.
If you want to backup all your photos and their folders, you can easily do that by connecting your phone to your computer and just copying all the top-most folders to the computer's hard drive, assuming you have a computer.

 

[JC No name]

Thanks, I hoped to do this from an app, but yes, I could manually copy them from the phone to get what i want. Just have to remember to do it and etc...

 

[Carla Gentile]

Re: How can I backup the album I create on my phone

I am having a battle with my phone (Pixel) because when I connect it via USB to a computer I cannot find the photos I transferred to an album. I can only see those I still left in the "Camera" folder. In my old phone (an old Samsung), when an album or folder was created and photos transferred into it, it would be stored in the SD card. But Pixel does not have an SD card. I can see the albums/folders in the phone but from a computer I cannot. I can only see a file with no extension with the name of the albums/folders and when I search for the photos by name from the computer into the Pixel they are simply not found. A complete mystery. I tried hidden files as well btw. I found in some forum an explanation that when you transfer photos to a created album, they actually go to the clouds. This is not the case because when I look at google photos from the phone, the albums are there under the category "photos in the device". And when I look on google photos from a computer, the albums are not there. Therefore, they must be in the phone somewhere. I spent many hours battling with this. I am so frustrated... I must transfer these photos from phone to computer but I cannot see them from the computer! I appreciate any help Please!

To answer the original question....

The albums on your phone are just file system folders.
If you want to backup all your photos and their folders, you can easily do that by connecting your phone to your computer and just copying all the top-most folders to the computer's hard drive, assuming you have a computer.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Albums in Google Photos are virtual constructs -- i.e., the file remains in the /DCIM/Camera directory, but Google Photos knows you created Google Photos album that includes this photo. That album is part of Google Photos, so if you go to photos.google.com on your computer browser, you'll see the album there as well, and the photo will be part of it.

If you physically created a new directory on the phone's Internal Storage and then moved the photo file to that directory, then it will show up in the Device Folders section under that folder. But that isn't the same as a Google Photos Album. So the question here is if you remember physically moving that photo file to a different directory on internal storage, or if you created an Album within Google Photos and assigned that photo to be in that album.