Hi all,
I have a Samsung S21 5G (the lower of the 3 models). I have always used Google Photos to store my photos. I have been using "original quality" but have now run out of free space. I can convert photos and save them as "high quality " instead to keep getting free storage, but it concerts them to 12 mp. The S21 camera is 64mp. If I was to do this, is it a difference I would notice? Or only if I was to blow them up hugely?
Thank you!

sarah13579 - 2021-04-07 06:55:00

Dunno. Test one and find out ?

nice_lady - 2021-04-07 07:30:00

The S21 has three cameras and only the telephoto (zoomed in) one has the 64mp sensors and by default it does not put out 64mp images (uses interpolation to increase the apparent zoom level)

That said Google Photos will still compress <12mp images when on 'high quality' whether or not this is visible will depend on your usage (I've never seen a visible difference with any cellphone shots)

vtecintegra - 2021-04-07 08:14:00

Of course the google storage is just a backup of the photos. The original highest quality ones are still on your phone so if you need to print or use highest res ones, just use the ones on your phone.

nzstocked - 2021-04-07 08:22:00

A 4k video is appx. 8 MB per frame.
If your not going to look at them on any higher spec monitor or tv than that then the answer is probably no.
If you plan on making 1 M wide prints then yes you will.
Remember a phone sensor if no where near as big as full frame or apsc camera one.
12 MP phone images don't equal 12 MP camera ones for quality.
As suggested do a quick test and take a half dozen shots of what would be your normal sort of subject at 64 MB and 12 MB and see what your eyes tell you.
Personally I have very fussy eyes, others I know don't.

smyrnia - 2021-04-07 08:33:00

My preference is to back up the content from our phones and cameras to an archive on a large sata drive using a yearly folder and then the folder name from the device. If I want to do anything other than view, I make a copy in the My Pictures folder and then edit it there. I don't update anything in the archive except deleting blurry no-merits. And occasionally I backup documents, my pictures, and the updated yearly folders from the archive to a removable disk and hide it. I don't use cloud storage.

Back to the question: "Google Photos - original vs high quality: is it a difference I would notice?" Conversion degrades the picture quality, and there are any number of conversion programs - you could convert it using google's tools, or you could retrieve the originals and use other software on your PC that have more resampling options, and then assess the picture quality from a number of conversions to find the one you think is best.

And I'd suggest setting the options in your camera so that all of your new photos are under the 'high-quality' size restriction. Setting the options to do this means only 1 resampling is performed, as the phone saves the photo. lol, google photos will probably still resample it.

gyrogearloose - 2021-04-07 08:59:00

I've never noticed any visual difference, even scaling them seems to work fine (up to a point) the google high quality setting is quite impressive.

bitsnpieces2020 - 2021-04-07 10:02:00

Thank you, that is super helpful ????

If I was to convert them to high quality in Google Photos, and the original quality photos were deleted off my phone, would restoring them back to my phone make them come back in the original phone quality, or the Google Photos high quality? Sorry for all the questions, Google isn't being helpful.

sarah13579 - 2021-04-07 13:41:00

If you copy a photo somewhere, (in this case to Google storage), and in the process of that copying it reduces the quality you CANNOT reinstate that original quality from that reduced copy.

nice_lady - 2021-04-07 14:41:00

If you need the space on your phone buy an external hard drive and copy the pics onto that. ALWAYS have more than one copy of any photos/data/etc which you want to keep. A single copy is vulnerable to loss due to hardware failure, theft, damage, internet breakdown (if copied to cloud based services), etc etc.

TWO copies.

nice_lady - 2021-04-07 15:01:00

OP, High Quality FREE storage will end next June (https://tinyurl.com/36y5emkk)-

After that it will count against your total storage been a free user or a Premium Google ONE user like me.
So as nice_lady said above, at the moment I'm using one of these External SSD (https://tinyurl.com/jf7th2d9)-
to store my Photos and Files locally as the device supports AES 256-bit hardware encryption to keep your personal and private data secure. and having a USB C port with USB C to USB C cable makes it really easy to grab and connect anytime.

Edited by flower_tears at 3:16 pm, Wed 7 Apr

flower_tears - 2021-04-07 15:07:00