Preparing multi-part Google Photos takeouts for migration with Avalanche

Preparing multi-part Google Photos takeouts for migration with Avalanche

Since v1.4 (*) Avalanche for Lightroom/for Luminar/Unlimited support the migration of Google Photos takeouts.

Understanding Google takeouts

Google Photo takeouts are file archives that can be downloaded from the Google TakeOut website and should automatically unzip in your Downloads folder on macOS.

Avalanche supports dropping those folders directly into the user interface in order to start the migration process.

In the case of large takeouts, these are split by Google automatically based on the largest manageable size that you have specified at takeout time (2Gb is the default).
Avalanche does not handle takeouts that have been split into multiple archives, so you need to merge them beforehand.
Don't worry, it's very easy.

Merging takeouts

All takeouts have the same structure, namely an enclosing folder named Takeout (by default) that contains a Google Photos folder.

Let us take an example.
Suppose I have 4 parts downloaded from Google. The 1st is named Takeout, and the three others were automatically named Takeout-1, Takeout-2 and Takeout-3 by the Finder.



What we want to do, is merge the Takeout-1, Takeout-2 and Takeout-3 folders inside the top Takeout folder.  There are 2 ways to do this:
  1. using Copy-Paste: copy the Google Photos folder from Takout-1 for example, and paste it into Takeout. Finder will detect that there is already a folder with the same name, and will prompt you to replace or merge. Choose "Merge".
  2. using alt+Drag and Drop. Drag the Google Photos folder from Takout-1 for example, and dropit into Takeout while maintaining the alt key pressed. Finder will detect that there is already a folder with the same name, and will prompt you to replace or merge. Choose "Merge".

Once all the parts have been merged into the top Takeout folder, you can process that folder using Avalanche.

Cleanup

The merge operation has duplicated the content of all the parts into the top Takeout folder. You probably want to delete those unnecessary folders to reclaim disk space.




(*) v1.1 in the case of Avalanche for CaptureOne


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