
Google Photos – Can I get out? - rubenv
https://rocketeer.be/blog/2015/05/google-photos/
======
davb
Actually, there is a setting in Google Photos (at least the web interface)
which lets you choose between "High quality" and "Original" (Menu ->
Settings).

"High quality" recompresses large files, but gives you unlimited storage space
for these recompressed files.

"Original" doesn't recompress or alter the files at all, at the expense of
using your Google Drive/Email/Storage space.

I'm not necessarily on board with auto photo backup (I don't completely trust
it - some photos should just remain private), but I like that they give you
this choice.

What I really ( _really_ ) hate is that they've moved the delete button. It's
no longer a button on the toolbar at the bottom (on the Android app), it's in
the menu and labelled "Delete local copy". I take a lot of throwaways while
trying to get the right shot - deleting photos is an every-day part of my
workflow (I delete more than I keep). This has now gone from one quick tap to
three (there's a confirmation dialog when you finally click the delete
button). This is a very frustrating change.

~~~
rubenv
Author here: Note that I did select Original and it still seemed to compress
the RAW file in Google Drive view. Single downloads do yield the original.

~~~
mvgoogler
Thanks for the article. I work on the photos team.

I will file bugs for the drive-sync issue and the issue with the large
downloads failing and try to get some answers.

~~~
rubenv
Nothing but love otherwise! In case it wasn't clear: Photos looks fantastic.
Add an API and it's perfect.

~~~
saurik
Given that it doesn't have an API, I don't understand why it was announced at
Google I/O. What is supposed to be a conference for developers has somehow
turned into a place for Google to demo a ton of random new end-user product
features.

~~~
sangnoir
In your opinion, only those products with API's available _today_ should be
announced? That sounds overly restrictive. By the same logic - Projects
Jacquard and Vault shouldn't have been announced either.

I think it's fair to announce products so devs can be ready when the API
becomes available.

~~~
saurik
First of all, "there were a couple things tacked on to the presentation that
maybe could one day be used by a developer" is a pretty desperate argument,
given that the keynote was three hours long and focussed on a ton of things
that don't have any API at all, like Photos, and did not mention a single
implication for a developer even for the things which had APIs, such as Now on
Tap (which means that developers had no reason to bother going to the sessions
on that feature, as it was clearly something designed for end users only;
apparently it actually has a couple APIs).

However, sure: I'll bite. No: announcing random stuff that we can't play with
and that they won't talk to us about is totally useless for developer. This
entire event was just about causing people to go "wow, they are smart". I am a
developer quite interested in 3D video, and so despite seeing Project Jump and
going "ugh, another end-user product announcement", I figure I might as well
talk to the engineers about it: only, they aren't willing to say anything
about what might be available or how it works or essentially anything about
their plans... so good luck "getting ready".

Regardless, the next thing you really need to defend, as this is what we are
talking about: what are you, as a developer, doing to get ready for Photos?
Google I/O has become less and less developer-focussed ever since it started
(I have gone every year), and has turned into more and more of just a showcase
of their end-user products. This year as the epitome, and all of the
developers that I know who attended were quite disappointed; even the ones who
still liked last year's somehow were now also saying "this event seems to have
lost its purpose and is no longer useful".

~~~
sangnoir
I think a keynote should be more of 10,000 foot view

> Regardless, the next thing you really need to defend, as this is what we are
> talking about: what are you, as a developer, doing to get ready for Photos?

You can't imagine how unlimited storage of images and videos have no
implications to devs and how we view curation of photos? Thats one less
limitation to worry about.

I 100% agree that I/O is becoming less and less developer focused. Lots of
non-developers want to attend (I blame the freebies they gave - looks like
that has stopped so it might get better). I/O (or any other 'developer'
conference) goes beyond the technical. There is a lot of self-promotion, PR,
recruitment (in the HR sense, and recruitment into the 'developer ecosystem')

------
0x0
Google's old desktop app "Picasa" is still my go-to for organizing photos. I
make a file system folder for each "album". Everything stays local on the fs
and there is no doubt about where the originals are (compared to
iPhoto/Photos.app, etc etc). OSX' built-in Time Machine to an USB drive +
rsync to a NAS takes care of multiple backups. I can easily drag&drop files
into apps and upload forms with no doubt that I'm working on the best possible
copy (original).

Too bad the app appears to have been going unmaintained for some time now. It
doesn't even support retina displays on OSX (in a _photo_ app!)

~~~
joosters
Me too! I don't like it when programs insist on storing my photos in their
own, non-human-readable directory structures and file names. Otherwise it
becomes a nightmare trying to use them in other programs. Even iPhoto->Photos
managed to break my library.

I just wish that Google would bring back the simple online photo sharing that
they used to have with Picasa. The Google+ merge ruined all that.

~~~
gcr
If you're willing to keep your photos in Dropbox and have the space for it,
take a look at Carousel.

Carousel respects whatever folder naming convention you have. All photos in
your dropbox show up in Carousel's photo list.

Pictures on Carousel are always saved to the "Carousel" folder in your
dropbox, but you can move them around to respect your preferred folder
structure without damaging anything.

~~~
pgrote
Do you know if there is a way to edit the metadata of a photo in Carousel? I
couldn't figure out how to add tags to the photos.

~~~
gcr
Not sure. My intuition is that photos are completely read-only; I don't think
it will ever change them, so tags might be stored in some other opaque
storage.

I do know that Carousel uses the DateTimeOriginal EXIF tag to set the date.
You can use this command to re-tag photos, for example:

    
    
        exiftool -DateTimeOriginal="2009:01:01 00:00:06" DSCF0038.JPG

------
WWKong
Like with all other Google services you should be able to get your data out
using the takeout service.

~~~
andrenotgiant
[https://google.com/takeout](https://google.com/takeout) \- Yep, still has
photos capabilities

------
therealmarv
And do not even try to edit your local desktop photos (desktop uploader will
not recognize at all) or try to delete local photos. Google photos only works
OK if you ONLY use your mobile phone for taking photos. If you have an normal
camera like e.g. a DSLR and want to sync that with Google photos: Forget it.
You will only have a lot of more management work with Google photos. Google
photos is again a dead end for your data. What we need is a good two way sync
for the desktop and more management possibilities in Google photos (because
there are NO management features). If you look at Lightroom and their cloud
sync (if you have an Adobe Cloud subscription): Adobe is lightyears ahead in
syncing. Google clearly does not care at all about the desktop.

~~~
CHY872
99% of people don't subsequently edit photos in photoshop; Google's tools are
adequate. You're in the 1% who are power users, and so might find the
mainstream solution inadequate. For that reason, software like Lightroom
exists.

~~~
hueving
Google used to be known for not aiming for the lowest common denominator.
They've gotten so large and crafty though that apparently "works good enough
to capture the majority" has replaced "make something great for everyone".

~~~
istvan__
I think targeting a smaller community is always easier and works better but
all the investors would like to see is plan for world domination, aka "make
something great for everyone".

------
notatoad
>There’s no way Google will know that “Trip to Thailand” should actually be
labeled “Honeymoon”

i wonder how much longer this will be true.

~~~
whonut
The only place I can see it getting info like this is a social network, and
that means G+...

In all seriousness, could they cross-reference dates in G+ posts and photos to
see that you mentioned being on your honeymoon when it was taken? Seems like
something they'd do if G+ was actually a thing people used.

~~~
icebraining
There's the Google Search looking for good place to stay on a honeymoon, the
email or hangout message sent to the SO mentioning it, the calendar event,
etc.

Even just seeing that you're on an irregular stay in Thailand (which it got
from your Android) right after your marriage can be telling.

~~~
whonut
Completely forgot email, calendar etc.

D'oh.

------
flycaliguy
I've never really treated my photos like special data that require an
interface beyond my OS. I keep them in an encrypted folder on my backup drive,
on my laptop and on my cloud service.

Maybe it's different if you have kids or something... but my folks only have
about 60 photos of my entire youth and that's 40 too many.

~~~
jasonkostempski
Yes, it's different when you have kids. I don't give 1 shit about any photo my
kid isn't in, but all photos he is in, regardless of quality, must be
preserved FOR ALL ETERNITY!! I suspect that feeling is common among parents.
That's why your parents have those 40 other pictures :)

------
pbw
I'm surprised the main timeline is a flat list. I have 30,000+ photos and
sometimes have 300 photos of the same event. It's impossible to browse the
overall contents with every photo shown.

I created a prototype[1] 5 years ago of a hierarchical timeline using
timestamps. It had it's own problems, but I would have thought by now someone
would have figured out a solution. Machine learn a hierarchy where each
coarser level has a subset which reasonably summarizes the next more detailed
level.

[1] - example
[http://pixtimeline.com/view/#105946173008403248796/553914066...](http://pixtimeline.com/view/#105946173008403248796/5539140669398690945)

------
jasonkostempski
After just a day of playing with it, I love the Google Photos service for what
it is, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't be a viable backup solution. If a
service offers anything more than strictly "file backup", it's a sure thing
you will lose quality and/or won't be able to get at it easily. I already have
a good backup system utilizing my free $50/month Azure benefits that come with
my MSDN subscription so I'm not really concerned about it. I personally don't
care much about sharing features but if Google can actually make this a good
backup + sharing system then they will win. For me "good" means my original
files are kept as-is and that upload/download is relatively quick. I'm fine
with days, not weeks. Azure (CloudBerry) took less than 5 hours for my 100GB
library over 35Mbs upload FiOS, but Google Photos isn't even 1/10th of the way
done after a day.

I love how it has mashed-up my photos into categories, stories, animations and
collages. Literally love it, it IS great. But backup system, it is not.

~~~
sosuke
Can you comment on your Azure based backup system? I have similar Azure
credits.

~~~
jasonkostempski
It's not super automatic but CloudBerry Explorer for Azure [1] is free and has
a pretty good folder sync feature. I basically just keep all my photos and
videos in single a folder on my desktop. Whenever I copy my families phones or
tablets to my PC I just run the saved sync, it's usually pretty quick. I have
over 90 GB of stuff so it actually took a long time for CloudBerry to analyse
the folder for the first time, after that it figures out what's new and needs
to sync pretty fast.

[1] [http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free-microsoft-azure-
explorer.a...](http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free-microsoft-azure-
explorer.aspx)

------
7ewis
So if you use Original, does it still use up your storage, even if the photo
is under 16MP, or video under 1080P?

From what I have read, they compress the files when 'High Quality' is chosen,
so I'm guessing if you select original, it all counts towards your storage?

------
jbuzbee
Been playing with Google Photos this morning and marveling how it is able to
categorize beer, bridges, kangaroos, koalas, etc. But of course it gets some
wrong. Anyone know how to change a categorization?

~~~
jbuzbee
I just realized that this post makes me sound like an Aussie! I guess I should
have thrown in that it also automatically recognizes bars, beaches, sunsets
and sharks!

~~~
testrun
still sounds like an Aussie.

------
zwetan
when I saw "unlimited free storage" I had to try :)

my interest was more on the video than the photo, when you click the option
"High quality (free unlimited storage)" the help mention it goes as far as
1080P for videos which is fair game for something free.

So I uploaded a couple of 720P videos, and redownloaded them to compare if
they were the same, what formats was supported, etc.

The good: it works kind of like a private Youtube, it does process the video
so when you watch it online you end up having it to auto 360P, which sucks a
little. But if when you redownload the video you get the original one (not
recompressed).

The bad: the UI and file naming is a joke.

I understand they wanted to make it simple to use and organise a lot of photos
and videos, but not being able to see the filename to quickly select a bunch
of files and put them in a group (or collection) is beyond me.

But let focus on something even simpler: select an item and no file name ? I
mean com'on google, am I not suppose to find/search easily trough my stuff ?

No regex in file name search either ...

My guess is the photo part was the main goal and the video part been added
quickly without much of a thinking about it, I do hope it would get better.

So far disappointing, if I was to upload all my videos there, I could not
organise them easily and worst I could not find them, it would be useless.

~~~
mynameisvlad
> No regex in file name search either ...

I mean, come on, did you really expect this? Most consumer-oriented search
systems I know of don't have this feature.

~~~
frik
He probably meant something like "*.jpg" which is common and works fine on
Microsoft Windows and Apple OSX. And probably not the full Regex syntax as
known from grep or Perl/PHP.

~~~
mynameisvlad
A wildcard search, then. Sure, that's more common (although sometimes
hilariously broken), I can give you that.

I'd expect wildcard searches too, but only because Google is a search company.
When I see a search box, I'm usually happy if it does a contains search
instead of an exact match, that's how low my expectations have become.

------
mark_l_watson
I have my cellphone automatically back up pictures to both OneDrive and Google
photos. Handy enough.

But, I like the OneDrive (or Dropbox if you don't mind the politics of
Dropbox) model: keep all photos and videos in chronological order, edit file
names, if desired, to add description after the file stamp, and generate one
off share URI links for friends to share pictures.

That said I appreciate having the extra backups, even if lower resolution, on
Google photos.

------
carlosecpf
Unfortunately, the "high quality" option is really low quality in reality.
Images that are crisp and sharp becomes very blurry on Photos. Some 12Mpx
pictures that I have got downscaled to 0.3Mpx on photos. However it does not
happen to all photos... Some of them deserve the "high quality compression"
badge. It just seems to be aleatory. Please fix this issue!

------
istvan__
I have been using this for a while and one day I realized it is skipping some
pictures when backing up. I went through all of my pictures and noticed ~5% is
missing. This was the last day when I trusted Google with picture backups. On
the other hand Flickr offers similar solution that actually does what it is
supposed to.

~~~
mvgoogler
Is this happening with the new app that launched this week?

If you have concrete examples I could investigate.

~~~
sorenjan
I have an example from before the new version of the Photos app came out. This
might have changed since then.

If I take a bunch of photos and then send some of them through Hangouts before
I get home to my WiFi those photos doesn't get backed up. I'm guessing it's
because Hangouts uses G+ albums for the photos, so technically the photos are
on Google's servers, but they're not where I expect them to be (in Auto
backup).

------
dk8996
The one thing that screwed me over is that the Upload by default compresses
the files to lower res. I lost some high-res photos this way.. this should not
be a default setting.

------
tedunangst
> Update: not quite, see below

Did I miss the update? All that's mentioned below is that Google drive offers
different files. There's nothing more about the download link.

~~~
darklajid
I'd guess that this is a reference to either

1) you have to do it one by one (or in very small batches), because the zip
export is broken

2) you get a different view via Google Drive

(I don't use those service, cannot even begin to imagine why one would upload
pictures to Google or use Google Drive, but - that's my take away from the
article and my own interpretation)

------
giancarlostoro
It's sad when you have to backup things from the cloud and not to the cloud,
it's sad when the cloud isn't straight forward about your files.

------
Animats
_" Once the (download) selection is large enough, it silently fails."_

"Mwahaha! Those sucker users will try a download and think they can get all
their photos back. But they can't! They're ours now! Ours!"

Hey, it worked for Instagram.[1]

[1] [http://www.cnet.com/news/instagram-says-it-now-has-the-
right...](http://www.cnet.com/news/instagram-says-it-now-has-the-right-to-
sell-your-photos/)

~~~
tedunangst
Did you bookmark that and post it without actually reading it? The update at
the top, very first paragraph, makes it pretty clear it didn't work.

------
weitzj
Did anybody think of steganography, yet? Or will the compression brake it
anyways?

------
asdf99
the cloud only exists because storage is cheap.

it should actually kill the cloud because storage is cheap. but all cloud
providers go out of their way to make their platform painful to use without
their cloud.

Apple makes backing up photos with iphoto annoying. Google makes backing up
photos via an app much easier than via usb or rsync on your home network...
etc

~~~
thrownaway2424
Storage in terms of raw bytes really is dirt cheap, but storage in terms of
erasure encoded, encrypted, multi-homed, highly-available file systems isn't.
Just buying a hard drive isn't going to get you very far. The durability of a
file on a cloud service is going to far outstrip that of your local hard drive
or even a fancy NAS.

~~~
pgeorgi
Cloud services outliving my (not so fancy) NAS. So, where's my Webshots
account? (since we're talking photos, let's take a photos example. It
shouldn't be hard to find an example of a dead web service for any other kind
of data, either)

_My_ datastore still exists and proudly provides those files from my
redundantly stored, checksummed, auto-repairing local filesystem. No, I don't
have an off-site backup. But neither had Webshots once they decided to shut
down.

~~~
thrownaway2424
Since I've never heard of "Webshots" that seems like a bit of cherry picking.
Flickr and Smugmug have both been hosting photos continuously for over a
decade.

~~~
pgeorgi
As per Wikipedia
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webshots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webshots)):

"By 2004, Webshots was grossing $15M/year, had more than 200,000 paid
subscribers, and was the #1 photo sharing site and top 50 media property per
ComScore. In the same year, Alexa ranked Webshots the second largest English
language privately held Web media property (behind weather.com)."

------
cddotdotslash
I don't understand all the outrage about Google compressing photos. They're
offering a free service; they can do whatever they want to save space. If you
don't want them to be compressed, use the fill size option and pay your share
of storage.

~~~
rubenv
Note that all testing was done with the paid "Original" option.

I happily pay for things, but when I do I like to verify that it does what it
says on the box.

------
taylorlapeyre
The answer, as the author points out, is yes. You can get them out via Google
Drive. The author also thinks that Google is doing something bad by
compressing a large uncompressed RAW file to 2mb, but that's the tradeoff you
get for asking for unlimited storage from the service.

Google clearly states that photos synced to Google Photos with unlimited
storage get compressed a lot. On the other hand, if you pay Google for more
Google Drive space and use Photos to sync your images there instead, there is
no compression.

~~~
Ensorceled
I think he means bad in the sense of "8:1 compression means poor quality
photos which shouldn't happen for a photo site" rather than bad in the sense
of "google is doing something wrong, immoral or illegal".

~~~
chias
It's hard _not_ to get 8:1 compression when we're starting from a RAW file

~~~
ygra
Raw already is compressed. My 40D takes raw files around 12 to 15 MiB. They
vary in size, so that's a first clue. Also, if you do the math, 14 bits per
channel on those images comes out around 65 MiB.

------
higherpurpose
I uninstalled Photos right after I installed it. Why? Because as soon as you
install it and you open it, it starts to _indiscriminately upload all of your
photos_ to Google's servers.

Now, I get that this is supposed to be a "cloud service" and whatnot. But I'd
prefer if it was very clear when I choose to upload them to the cloud, and I'd
also prefer to pick and choose which photos go into the cloud _by default_. If
people want to upload _everything_ by default to Google's server, that should
be an opt-in feature.

~~~
timothya
> _it starts to indiscriminately upload all of your photos_

It only uploads your photos if you check the "Back up & sync" checkbox when
you first start the app. If you uncheck that box, it won't upload anything.
Don't spread FUD.

~~~
kuschku
And it’s still illegal in many countries to upload and process private data
without explicit permission.

And, as previous cases showed, permissions granted through default-checked
boxes, or permissions granted through fine print hidden in the ToS are legally
not binding, meaning the uploading is considered a computer crime.

Thilo Weichert, data protection officer of the state of Schleswig-Holstein,
Germany, did several law cases based on this against Facebook, and almost all
of them.

~~~
izacus
What? Google Photos (just like before) gives you a FULL SCREEN question asking
if you want to backup before it even lets you run it.

So, again, what are you talking about?

~~~
fwn
Don't try. There is no way to protect yourself from our absurd German privacy
laws. (Except if you are the government, then nothing matters.) Even the local
residents' registration offices simply sell your private data for next to
nothing to cheap ad companies.

..but if you are an US company, we hate you for the votes.

~~~
kuschku
Don’t worry, Weichert is suing the government, too ;)

And the parliament of SH relies on the fact that mass surveillance will have
to be cancelled, too, as it violates several data protection laws.

The constitutional court struck down the mass surveillance laws already two
times, they’ll do it again.

And yes, I was one of the people protesting on the street against the new laws
regarding Melderegisterzugriff

