Ask HN: Google Photos Alternatives?

Post by mig4ng » Mon, May 09, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

mceachen wrote: post #4

I'm not aiming to replace Google Photos specifically, but you might want to try PhotoStructure: I'm the author. I wrote it to sweep all the photos and videos from 30+ HDDs I've accumulated from prior servers and backups and laptops into one neat deduplicated pile, free from invalid or corrupt or bitrotted copies. There's a fast web-based front end that uses random sampling and hierarchical tagging to find stuff quick…

Post by poulpy123 » Tue, May 10, 2022, 11:07 AM UTC

mceachen wrote: post #10

frederikb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically there is no way for a lossless synchronization/export out of Google Photos apart from using Google Takeout to the best of my knowledge. For reference check the best effort project https://github.com/gilesknap/gphotos-sync and the "Known Issues with Google API" section. In short: * photos lose some metadata including GPS * You will lose your RAW images (AFAIK) * videos are always transcoded with a lossy co…

This is what I've found as well. Although Google Takeout is strictly better than pulling your files down via their API, even the metadata in takeouts can be mucked with. I'd strongly recommend only using Google Photos as what it is: a _lossy_ backup (that gets expensive if you have a big library). If you care about your originals, use one of the several applications that allow your phone to backup your originals dire…