Your wedding photos came as a Google Drive link. What now?

The short answer

The link is the photographer's copy, not yours. Keep it, and make a second copy that you control: a download to your laptop or a drive, or a copy in your own Google Drive.

Work from whichever copy opens fastest for you. Keep the photographer's file names, share with family by link as a viewer, and send the album maker only the photos for the album, never the whole link.

First: a copy you control

Google's Drive help says files shared with you do not count against your storage; they count against the owner's. That is why the photographer's link is fragile: when the studio clears space for the next season's weddings, the folder can go, and your link with it.

Ask the photographer how long the link stays open, and make your copy this week. A copy in your own Drive counts against your storage; Google says each account includes up to 15 GB, shared across Gmail, Drive and Google Photos, so a big wedding may need more space, or a download instead.

• Adding a shortcut to the folder in your Drive is not a copy: it still points at the photographer's files
• A download to a laptop or an external drive is a copy
• A copy made inside your own Drive is a copy, and uses your storage

Download it, or work from Drive?

Download if your laptop or an external drive has room for the whole folder: photos open instantly, and you have the copy you needed anyway. Work from Drive if the folder is too big for your laptop, or if you choose on a phone, and make sure the copy you work from is yours.

Either way, do not rename the photos. Your album maker, and anyone looking for the original later, will use the photographer's file names.

How Drive downloads a big folder

Drive's help says to select the files, right-click and choose Download. When you download a folder, Drive packs it into zip files. When Google introduced this in 2016, it said large downloads come as several zip files of about 2 GB each, so a big wedding arrives as a row of zips. Google changes how Drive works from time to time, so expect the details to differ.

Two things can stop a download, and Google's help names both. The owner may have turned off downloading, printing and copying for viewers; if so, ask the photographer to turn it on. And a file that many people opened or downloaded recently can show "Too many users have viewed or downloaded this file recently", which Google says usually clears within 24 hours.

1. Open the photographer's link on a laptop, on Wi-Fi.
2. Download the folder, one function at a time if it is very big.
3. Keep every zip file until all of them have finished.
4. Unzip each one into the same folder.
5. Count the photos and compare with the number in Drive before you close the link.

Sharing with family

Share a smaller folder, not the whole wedding. A folder for each side, or the album once it is chosen, gets looked at; four thousand photos do not.

Drive's sharing has three roles. Viewers can see the files, commenters can also comment, and editors can change and share them. Google's help says viewers and commenters can download by default unless the owner turns it off. Choose Viewer for family. If you set a folder to anyone with the link, Google says anyone who has the link can open it without signing in, so send that link only where you mean to.

Google Photos is not the same as Drive

Some couples move the folder into Google Photos to see faces and scroll more easily. That is fine for looking, but check the quality setting. Google's help says that in Storage saver, photos are stored at a slightly reduced quality and photos larger than 16 MP are resized to 16 MP.

For the album, always keep and send the photographer's originals. Our comparison of Google Photos and Phopho and Toto says what Google Photos does well for a wedding.

Bringing the Drive folder into Phopho and Toto

In Photos, choose "A link on WhatsApp or email" and paste the link your photographer sent. We recognise the Google Drive folder and count its photos, every function and every subfolder, before anything is copied.

The folder needs to be open to anyone with the link, or shared with our address as a viewer. If it is private to your photographer's Google account, we say so and show the address to ask them to share it with. If downloads are turned off, we say that too.

We sort JPEG, PNG and WebP photos, up to 12,000 for one wedding. RAW and HEIC files are counted and left out; if the folder has only those, ask your photographer for the JPEG folder, the one they would send for printing. You can close the page while the photos come in; the copy keeps going. Usually 35 to 70 minutes once your photos are in.

Nothing changes in the photographer's folder. When your album is chosen, Send to your album maker puts it into a new Drive folder you share with your album maker.

A checklist for the week the link arrives

• Ask the photographer how long the link stays open
• Make a copy you control: a download, or a copy in your own Drive
• Count the photos in your copy against the link
• Keep the photographer's file names
• Share small folders with family, as viewers
• Agree a number and a date with your album maker

Questions people ask