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There is an important difference. Google is transparent about what is going on.

When I set up Google Photos I was asked: Do you want to use Google's high quality or do you want to preserve the original photos and have them count against your storage quota?

After that, you should know what you're getting into. I certainly did.

Google's high quality... That's some deceiving wording right there. High quality are the originals, those are at the maximum optimized.

Not really, the quality is fine enough. And the other option (that takes up space) is called "Original Quality".

But the difference, if you read the docs, is that everything below 16 megapixels is the same for high quality and original quality. The only photos that ever get downsampled are ones above 16 megapixels.

Oh sweet, I didn't know that! :)

Another way Google Photos is transparent is the app will actually let you know that many of the photos on your phone have been backed up to Photos. The app will ask if you would like those backed up photos to be removed from your phone. (And it'll ask you every time since it doesn't assume that if you said "yes" once then you mean "yes" every time.) So, there's no question about where your photos went when you can't find them.

Google drive has a switch in the options to expose a "Google Photos" folder, which contains the original versions of all your uploaded google photos. You can then download these photos with any google drive client. The photos you download have identical MD5 sums to the photos you uploaded - they're completely untouched.

The Drive client can download them, yes. You can also use Google Takeout and download all of the original files as well.

https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

This is exactly why I use OneDrive to backup my photos along with the google photos thing. I've tried explaining my logic to several people but usual replies are "but I can still see them on the website!". "But you won't have the image files anymore." "But I can open the website and see the pics, right?" At this point I just sigh and give up. Oh there's a download all button too, but it does NOT return the original files. All the files are much smaller than the original images.

The Dropbox app has a camera roll auto-upload feature. It's reliable, full-resolution image file backup and works for iOS and Android.

iCloud Photos is the worst: Last time I tried to download all my iCloud Photos/Videos (~1000) from the website it turned out to be impossible: You can download a few, but after 200 or so you just get server errors. And it always chokes on videos, stopping before having finished downloading the full file. There is no bulk export option like with Google Takeout.

Now I hear that this is not a problem if you have the Photos app on you Mac (it syncs), but I don't have a Mac.

One major flaw: Dropbox on iOS rotates the image data and resets the EXIF orientation header when it finds a rotated file. If you've ever used a different sync path you'll end up with a bunch of duplicate images with different hashes.

I have a lot of duplicate images from dropbox but I'd never known why until now. It just required me to get an additional app not by dropbox that evaluates images and deletes duplicates which took me a long time to find a good one as terrifying as that process is.

Which one did you use? I have had the same problem.

n.b. if anyone at Dropbox sees this or others want to reference it, here's the ticket: https://dropbox.zendesk.com/requests/3750448

That link doesn't work for me, says request not found.

Can you clarify this a bit? I.e what does the Dropbox app do if you take a picture in portrait mode, and what does iOS do? Is the rotation info lost completely?

Yes: it rotates the pixel data and resets the EXIF Orientation header. That means that it looks identical even when displayed as expected with a viewer which doesn't honor the EXIF orientation.

It's a lossless rotation - you can actually use something like jpegtran to rotate it back and the pixel checksum in ImageMagick's identify will match – but it completely breaks any system which uses checksums to detect duplicates, of course. I noticed when I started testing Google Photos and had a ton of duplicate images.

> The Dropbox app has a camera roll auto-upload feature. It's reliable, full-resolution image file backup

I know. I used to use it. It worked perfectly. I switched to Onedrive primarily because my free 48GB Dropbox expired and I got 100GB Onedrive with my new phone.

OneDrive is horrible for backup because it doesn't keep any history of your files. Get a Ransomware on your computer, then watch in horror how your files are gone and how totally useless OneDrive can be.

This is why I prefer Dropbox. They keep 30-days worth of history so you can revert any file changes during that period. And I prefer to pay extra for the Extended History add-on, giving me 1 year worth of history. They aren't alone in doing this. SpiderOak also keeps the history of all changes from what I understand and they also do encryption. And Google Drive keeps history for 30 days, but they don't have an add-on. Note though that Google Photos can be downloaded by means of Google Drive ;-)

I did try OneDrive with a trial Office365 subscription, but I think at this point OneDrive is the worst option out of the mainstream ones. Besides the lack of version history, it also lacks a Linux client. One thing I do is to have a home machine that I keep turned on for having an extra backup, being synchronized with Dropbox. It also serves as a media box, but it's a Linux box, because Linux is the best option for servers, including home ones.

And it's not as cost effective as you'd think. If you look at Office alternatives and considering the OneDrive features you get, it's quite overpriced.

>OneDrive is horrible for backup because it doesn't keep any history of your files.

I hadn't considered that. Though a dropbox bug lost my documents and also deleted all version history. That was one reason I stopped using it.

Edit: I checked and it seems Onedrive does have version history.

> This is why I prefer Dropbox.

Dropbox is too expensive and I don't really need 1 TB :/

> Google Drive

I will not pay for any Google service. I'll use the free stuff and expect them to disappear/stop any time.

Check again because it does not have version history. It only does it for "Office documents". This has been one of the long requested features that's still unaddressed.

On Dropbox losing files, never had problems, but I believe you. All software is terrible.

I had once lost Dropbox files, but only because I deleted a folder on my local Dropbox folder and assumed it won't sync that 'deletion' to the cloud. My intention was to sync only some selected folders locally and let the rest be online. Also, I came to know about it later than 30 days as well - which is the time they keep backup of deleted stuff for.

Wait. I assume even OneDrive doesn't have free unlimited storage right? After a certain limit, you've to pay. Similarly, if you pay, you can store all the photos in their original size (not the smaller max 16MP versions of them - which are free & unlimited) in Google Photos as well, and download when you want.

I store my photographs in external Hard Disk as well as Google Photos - because of the amazing search and categorization features built into it.

I have 100 GB space free in my Onedrive which is enough. Also, my pictures sync directly to my laptop, unlike Google photos, which shows in the website and you have to manually download them later.

Also, I cannot see my photos in Google drive at all. I have to go to google.com/photos to see or download the backed up pics. This is what my drive looks like if I click on the Google photos button on the left sidebar: https://imgur.com/wh9ONt5

> Oh there's a download all button too, but it does NOT return the original files.

It does return the original files.

Here are two files, one that got backed up off my phone by google photos, which I then downloaded from google drive, and one that I copied directly off my phone via USB:

   $ md5sum IMG_20160504_160057648_HDR*
    4bcb38a2e3869b4c769301c1664f5846  IMG_20160504_160057648_HDR (1).jpg
    4bcb38a2e3869b4c769301c1664f5846  IMG_20160504_160057648_HDR.jpg

The files are identical.

Perhaps it doesn't always return the original. There are a lot of variables - maybe smaller images or those already optimised or ... aren't recompressed/changed?

How big are your files? How many megapixels? I just see that the pictures in my phone are ~4-5 megabytes big and when I download them from google.com/photos, they are just a bit under a megabyte mostly.

There's an option to upload the pics at 'Original Size' or 'High Quality' (reduced). If you use the Original quality (which counts against your storage), you should see the same image.

OK yeah that does make sense. I had that on earlier but my google Drive quota ran out. So I switched to 'High Quality' (reduced). Maybe that's why I do not get the original pics.

Yeah, I have set that as high quality as well, as though reduced in size, the pictures are are almost the same in appearance.

I keep my RAW images on OneDrive for backup and use Google Photos with the free version / high quality version. I find Google Photos's client really good as a gallery on Android, (OneDrive is really slow). So when I show people my photos I use Google Photos but the originals are on OneDrive.

The stock gallery app in my phone runs circles around the Google photos app in speed. Also, editing pics in Google photos app is a clunky, hit-or-miss affair.

google takeout my friend:

https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

That is the best suggestion.

Just enabled it on my domain, will try tomorrow.

I am not sure it's the same, as far as I was aware Google photos never deletes the local copy.

On the phone, "freeup device storage" is an option that is prompted (and sounds like a wonderful idea)... whereby the phone copy is purged if the original file has already been "backed up" to Google.

It isn't possible to restore the backup.

...And which gives you a modal warning box that starts "Heads up! This will delete n original photos and videos from your device". And will only proceed if you click an all-caps confirmation button labelled "DELETE".[0]

That's hardly comparable to Apple deleting things automatically, silently, with neither warning nor confirmation.

[0] http://www.androidpolice.com/wp-content/themes/ap2/ap_resize...

Even with the warning, people assume that backup means they aren't losing anything, and can get back the original pics whenever they like. In fact, image data is being lost here. You can never get back your original photos, only highly compressed smaller sized JPGs that will look OK on a mobile screen.

You can choose whether to backup converted photos or originals.

There is an option when you turn on Google photo to backup "High Quality" (Unlimited) or "Original" (with limited capacity, I think it uses Google Drive capacity but am not sure)

.. Unless you choose exactly that option when presented at install time. So people may regret getting exactly the behavior that they chose?

OK get you, I personally don't mind that sort of thing if I am explicitly asked but I see what you are saying.

But it is an Apple issue. Whether Google does something comparable is no justification and does not make Apple any better.

And no, Google is not doing something similar.

I didn't read it as the GP justifying Apple's behaviour, he was just warning people that Google does something similar ("I thankfully have a local backup of the photos I took").

You see comments like "Y does something bad too" on a story about X very frequently. May not be meant as a justification, but I think they are often distracting from the actual topic. If you went through the Terms of Service of similar services, you can probably find countless upsetting examples. So what is the conclusion? Let's just take it as it is, because everyone is doing it or abandon all services instead?

The latter, yes.

False.

.

https://photos.google.com

Select all (click first, hold shift, click last)

Click download icon on top

Enjoy zip archive of all photos

Can you not just download all the photos through google drive in bulk?

I looked, whilst photos appears as a folder in drive, there is no option to "download all", and it would require me to load them into the browser view, select them, and then choose to download them.

For reference, I have 125GB of photos since 1994 in there... it would take a very long time to select them all.

You can install Google Drive Desktop and sync them to your computer all at once.

Could you use the Google Drive program and then sync that folder to your local machine?

I use Linux: https://www.google.co.uk/drive/download/

There is no client.

The lack of a Linux client really really pisses me off.

I can right click my Google Photos folder and download the whole thing as a zip, just tested it and it works fine.

You can use google takeout to download a zip archive of literally all your photos.

you can use google takeout https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

Any UI that is not honest with users is a bad thing. I use this service and I know that my original is no longer there when I allow Google to delete my local files but maybe i'm the exception. I will add that it depends on your perspective as to how you see this. You can look at how easy Google makes it to take photos on your phone and then have them all backed up and available with a click of a button. And in addition you can look at how hard it used to be to do anything like that (my grandparents never had photos when they lived in Italy because the town they lived in didn't have any photographers). If you see it through that lens then it's awesome.

Thanks, I didn't know about google photo's no restore issue, I'm going to check! But I recall there's a setting somewhere in the app that lets you choose if you want to delete photos from your device or not after they're backed up, but maybe I'm wrong. I'll check this evening and let you know.

I've just checked and actually you can choose if delete them or not.