Warning: Google Photos won’t back up your high-res .DNG photos
So one of the things I like doing on the HTC One M9 include taking raw photos and editing them later. I also like all my photos being synced to Google Photos and organized and kept safe for me, and I really liked that, even though they were going to compress any of the photos that were over 16MP down a bit, at least I’d still have a good version of my 40+ meg masterpiece.
Unfortunately, what I’ve discovered from both the camera sync and the desktop version is that Google Photos seems to have a problem with the One M9’s raw format: DNG – Digital NeGative.
What has followed raw photo shoots is a very long upload, and then 90% corrupted pictures on the other side. You can see in the screenshot that I have the low res previews fine, and the DNGs are processed for a tenth of the picture – and then it just gives up.
I’ve checked and the files are readable, work in Photoshop, and adhere to the DNG format standards; it’s just Google’s photo processor gives up the goat during processing and saves damaged high-res photos.
So just a word of warning, until Google fixes its raw/uncompressed processing, it’s likely anything you shoot raw will be stored damaged in the cloud, and it’s unlikely Google will be able to fix the images without syncing them once again from your side.
I don’t know if this affects all raw formats, or just the DNG standard, but it does make me slightly more skittish of my data. Not that there’ve been too many lightsaber battling toddler masterpieces since I discovered this problem, but you never know when you can snap a photo and find your phone with a hole through it.
