Lightroom to Google Photos, on the real screen.

Google Photos is a plugin for Lightroom Classic that sends your edited photos straight into Google Photos albums. Each collection in Lightroom becomes an album. Edit a photo later, press Publish, and the album gets the new version. In this walkthrough we start from zero: download, install and sign in, then every feature, with Google Photos open so you can see what happens on both sides.

After you buy, you land on this page, and your license key arrives by email. Click Download Plugin. You get a zip file. Open it, and you have a folder called google-photos dot lrplugin. That folder is the whole plugin, the same one for Mac and Windows.

First, move the folder somewhere it can stay. Lightroom's own Modules folder is a good home. Your Documents folder works too, just not Downloads, which tends to get cleaned out. Now in Lightroom, open File, Plug-in Manager, and click Add. Pick the google-photos dot lrplugin folder, and click Add Plug-in. Google Photos is in the list, installed and running. Click Done. On Windows it is the same. Just pick the dot lrplugin folder itself, not the folder it was unzipped into.

The plugin lives in the Publish Services panel, on the left of the Library module. Click Set Up next to Google Photos. At the top, Plugin Update tells you when a newer version is out, with a button to download it. Next, License. Copy the key from your receipt email, paste it here, and click Activate. Licensed. If you ever move to a new computer, the Deactivate button is right here. More on that at the end.

Then Google Account. Click Connect to Google Photos. Your browser opens Google's own sign-in page, and Lightroom waits while you finish there. If the browser that opened is not the one you use for Google, that waiting window has the sign-in link to copy into the right one. Pick the Google account whose Google Photos you want to fill, and click Continue. Google shows what the plugin asks for: adding photos to your library, and seeing and editing only the albums and photos the plugin itself creates. It can't see the rest of your library. Tick Select all, so all three are allowed, and click Continue. The browser says Authentication Successful. You can close that tab. Back in Lightroom, click Continue. It now says Connected, with your Google address.

Rendered Files. Lightroom makes a JPEG of each photo to upload, and deletes it once it is in Google Photos. Tick this if you want to keep the files. Captions, Capture Time and Location. Your Lightroom caption always travels with the photo. Tick this, and later caption changes update the text in Google Photos without uploading the photo again. We will turn it on. Everything below is Lightroom's usual export settings. Keep the format on JPEG, so your edits are baked into what Google receives. Original would send the raw file, without your edits. Set the quality you like. I use ninety. Image size, sharpening, metadata and watermark work exactly as in any Lightroom export. Click Save.

Every published collection is one album. Select the photos you want to share, here my thirty-six picks from a trip to Scotland. Right-click Google Photos, Create Published Collection. Name it, tick Include selected photos, and click Create. The collection opens with the thirty-six photos under New Photos to Publish. Nothing goes to Google Photos until you press Publish.

Click Publish. The plugin creates the album in Google Photos, renders each photo with your edits, and uploads it. Thirty-six photos uploaded. Click Open in Google Photos. And there they are, edits and all, ready to look at on any phone or tablet signed in to that account. Back in Lightroom, they have moved to Published Photos. That is how you know what is already in Google Photos.

Captions. Type them in Lightroom's Metadata panel, as usual. Here, the names of three places. Because we ticked the caption setting, the three photos move to Modified Photos to Re-Publish. Click Publish. Three captions updated in place. Not one photo was uploaded again. In Google Photos, open the photo. The caption is right there, and it fills the description in the info panel.

Now the real reason to publish instead of exporting: changing your mind after the album is shared. The viaduct goes black and white, and the highland cow gets a square crop. Both move to Modified Photos to Re-Publish. Click Publish, and only those two upload. Google does not let any app replace or delete a photo. So the plugin moves the old versions out of your album, into an album called To Delete, Lightroom Plugin. The album has the new versions now. Google adds them at the end of the album. Whenever you like, open that album, select the old versions and delete them yourself. It's also a safety net. Nothing leaves your Google Photos until you've looked at it and deleted it yourself. If Google then offers to delete the empty album, either is fine. Keep it and the plugin uses it again, or delete it and the plugin makes a new one next time.

To add photos later, drag them onto the collection. Five more from the trip. To take photos out, select them in the collection and remove them. Lightroom lists them under Deleted Photos to Remove. One Publish does both. Five new photos go up, and the two removed ones leave the album for To Delete. Photos that did not change are skipped, so publishing again is quick.

Rename the collection in Lightroom, and the album is renamed in Google Photos too.

Smart collections work too, so an album can fill itself. Create Published Smart Collection. The rule here: rating is five stars. Eight photos from different trips match, and Publish sends them. Give any photo in your catalog five stars, and it is waiting in this collection. Publish, and it is in the album.

Make as many albums as you like. One collection, one album. Here is a second trip. Sharing happens in Google Photos, like any album. Open it there and use Share to send the link to family or a client. From then on, whatever you publish shows up for everyone you shared it with.

Delete a collection in Lightroom, and Lightroom asks what to do with its photos. Leave on Service keeps them in the Google album, and Lightroom stops tracking them. Use it for an album you want to keep, like one you've shared. Delete moves them out, into To Delete. Use it when you're done with the album. The album itself stays in Google Photos, empty, because the plugin cannot delete albums. Delete it in Google Photos if you do not need it.

Two tools live under Library, Plug-in Extras. Re-upload selected photos sends photos again even when nothing changed, for example if a copy in Google Photos ever looks wrong. Mark them, then Publish. Clear false re-publish marks. Lightroom sometimes marks photos as changed when they are not. This checks each one and clears the marks with no real edit behind them. The plugin also does this quietly in the background, so you will rarely need it.

Everything else is in the settings. Right-click Google Photos, Edit Settings. The plugin uses one Google account at a time. To switch, click Disconnect, then connect the other one. Moving to a new computer? Click Deactivate here first, then activate the same key on the new one.

A few things to know. The plugin works with the albums it creates. Google does not let apps add to albums you made by hand. Captions travel to Google Photos. Keywords and ratings stay in Lightroom. Keep the format on JPEG, so Google gets your edits. The full written guide is at lightroom-tools.com/google-photos-guide, and a real person answers at [email protected].