Nextcloud can be a replacement for your photos and video repository.
This media takes up a lot of storage and be costly when stored with Google. Cue the alternative of Nextcloud. Understanding the constraints on network and server speed, your experience should be an exact match to that of Google Photos.
Some workflows and organization will assist with the process of uploading media and viewing/sharing it later on. Consider this as a recommendation and retain a backup of your media at all times. Confirming that it has transferred successfully prior to removing the original.
The recommended photo gallery app for mobile devices can be found here – Nextcloud
Easy Route
Navigate to takeout.google.com
Select Google Photos and export as desired. This take a while on Google’s depending on how many items you have. You will be alerted via email when it is ready to be downloaded. Your network speed might be hindered as the download will be large. Consider starting this overnight.
Once downloaded, unpack (unzip) the media and organize as needed. Recommended to sort your media based on year and month. As you organize your media, remove any duplicates or multiples of similar content. You may find that many photos can be removed as you really only need to keep one of the 5 pictures you took of the sunset that was pretty that one evening. Or, may not want to keep it all.
Albums will need to be recreated in Nextcloud (can be imported but it is highly advised that you recreate them).
Once organized and sorted, it is recommended to use a sync client to upload the content. See Desktop and Mobile Sync Clients for more information.
You can copy the content as a whole (i.e. the year and month folders organized as …/2020/01/IMG_20200101-001100.jpg), copying all the year folders to the Photos folder on the Nextcloud app. This will take time to sync but will allow you to have an easy structure to work with.
Metadata for the photos and videos (GPS, date, device, and lens information) should be retained via this export method. The photo gallery app in Nextcloud will try to organize the media via the modified date which will now be the date and time it was downloaded from Google Photos. This can be corrected via a backend job ran by the system admin. Please contact them.
The recommended mobile app for photos will try to parse metadata (EXIF) if enabled and sort that way.
If auto sorting is not required in the gallery app, you can find images based on the folder structure that was sorted previously.
.json files can be ignored.
Once you have confirmed that your pictures have been moved and are as you wish, you remove them from Google Photos as you please.
Detailed Route (Recommended)
This route will save some bandwidth and storage.
Start by organizing and removing unneeded items from Google Photos. As you sort through a month or a year, up to 500 items, select the desired items and download. Google Photos will create a zip file of the folder with the selected items. This can be renamed appropriately and/or further organized prior to being copied to the Photos folder on the Nextcloud app.
Metadata is retained via this download method. Although, similar to the easy route, the modify date will be changed to the time of download. Items will be sorted by month and year for easy navigation, but a backend job can be run to replace the modify date with the date that is in the EXIF metadata.
The recommended mobile app for photos will try to parse metadata (EXIF) if enabled and sort that way.
Repeat with years and months of items on Google Photos.
Once you have confirmed that your pictures have been moved and are as you wish, you remove them from Google Photos as you please.
Stop Items From Being Shown in Photos Gallery App
In the folder of the contained media items, create a blank text file with the name of .noimage
This will be scanned by the system and any media in that folder will not show in the gallery app.
This is recommended for folders older than six months as it will help render the previews for the gallery app. You can still view them by navigating to the respective year/month in the gallery apps folder menu option. Take time to manage your photos and respect the speed of the communal server.