Google Photos High Quality may not be nearly as high as the original

When Google launched the Google Photos cloud storage, not to be confused with the app of the same name, it was touted as the last way to save space on your phone and save your digital memories. almost forever. It came with a rather generous offer of almost unlimited photo storage space, as long as they only uploaded in High Quality. Nothing lasts forever, as they say, and Google seems to be revising its earlier statements to take more space towards a Google One subscription. .

To be fair, Google reserves the right to change whatever policy or feature it has, within reason and with prior notice, of course. It also did not make measurable claims for a reason, leaving some objects open for explanation and subject to change as necessary.

Half a decade ago, Google said high-quality images boasted visual quality that was roughly equal to their original Quality. The purpose, back then, was to encourage users to compress their original photos to take advantage of Google Photo’s unlimited storage offer. Starting June 1st this year, however, even high-quality photos will count toward your cloud storage and you can easily beat your 15GB quota without paying for a sub. additional storage writing.

Now Google is said to be sending emails that are, of course, trying to push Google Photos users to upload even more original Quality photos than High Quality. The image above compares the difference between original (left) and High (right) attributes, clearly showing that visual quality is not close to the same level. Considering high-quality uploads delete the original Quality photos on your phone by default, this means that you may be doing unsustainable damage to your original photos.

On the one hand, this may not actually represent all high quality images and some users may not even be able to tell the difference most of the time. On the other hand, these changes have left some people under suspicion that Google’s ulterior motive is to make people pay now for more Google Drive storage after being blacked out. Google Photos years ago.

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