Quick panic! All your photos are stranded on Facebook and you’re desperate to get them over to Google’s shiny new social network. Desperate times call for desperate measures, a shylock, a middleman, a fixer.

Calm down dear. Before you head off into the depths of the unknown looking for a quick fix, let Pocket-lint show you the blinding simplicity with which you can move pictures from one service to the other. 

First of all, it is worth understanding that Google+ runs its images through Picasa (which may or may not be changing its name to Google Photos). Picasa provides the backdoor for Google+ images because of the services it already supports, including syncing with your desktop… 

Basically you have to extract your photos from Facebook and then use the Picasa desktop client to sync them with Picasa. Those Picasa albums then appear in Google+ as albums to share. Simple, huh?

If you’re still confused, follow these instructions:

1. Download content from Facebook. In Facebook head to Account > Settings > Download your information
2. Facebook will email when your content is ready (expect hours), download the ZIP file
3. Head over to http://picasa.google.com/ and download the desktop client (Mac, PC, Linux supported). Install and log in with your Google account
4. In the Facebook ZIP file you’ll find a photos folder, un-ZIP this. Picasa can be set to automatically catalogue your images. Let it scan the Facebook photos folders
5. Once it is done, right click on the folder(s) you want on Google+ and hit “Upload to Picasa Web Albums…”
6. Head over to Google+ and look in Your albums.
7. Feel smug.

Ok, so Picasa’s desktop client is a powerful scanning tool and it’s well worth getting to know how it works whilst Facebook is preparing your download. There are options for Web Album syncing, including privacy and quality that are worth looking at, as well as scanning options.

The great thing about this approach is you can pick and choose exactly what you upload to Google+ and it leaves all your Facebook photos in tact. If you decide you just want to share your best albums, you have the power to do so. You also don't have to step out of the Facebook/Google system and give your login details to anyone else...

The extra bonus is that you are then all set to share with Google+ from your desktop with minimal fuss in the future.

UPDATE: As rightly pointed out, there is a 1GB limit on photos you move via this route at present. We suspect this will change in the future if Google does a rebranding exercise on Picasa, with a move in line with Google+, which offers unlimited storage.

Have you read our in-depth exploration of Google+? Have you read our review of the Google+ App for Android? You really should.