Dropbox doesn't preserve the metadata of photos uploaded.

I’m glad to hear this helped a bit. Your feedback is most valuable and I’ve made sure that all of your comments have been forwarded to our team. 

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Have a great day as well, Paweł!

Thanks, I'll keep trying. The information about the desktop transfer method was very helpful. Overall, I think Dropbox is a very good cloud service: fast, reliable when it comes to syncing and updating changes. It has a clear online interface (there's always room for improvement), and I hope it becomes my lifeline in case of unexpected data loss. From my perspective—right now—Dropbox needs to improve the Photos "department". Organizing and cataloging. Best Regards and have a good day. 

Paweł

After logging into Dropbox, I enabled the "camera upload" feature and downloaded all my photos from my MacBook—about 30,000 of them. It was utter chaos. Most were in their proper places on the photo card (gallery), but several thousand weren't. Manual adjustments (e.g., the date taken in 3,000-4,000 photos was absurd) and all other attempts were futile. Finally, I deleted all the photos. I tried exporting photos to a separate folder, I tried transferring them via MultCloud from OneDrive (everything is in its proper place on that cloud). The result was similar: the same, or even greater chaos. I went back to the "zero" option and deleted many files, a huge number of photos. About 17,700 remained. Additionally, I decided to only upload photos that were new, at most, two years old. Only digital ones—mainly iPhone 15 Pro Max and iPhone 17 Pro Max, Nikon. Using the "+ add files" option, then "select," and in batches of 200-300. Again, a mess. This time, however, I examined the photos even more closely, with less than encouraging results. Dropbox doesn't like photos sent by someone else—even a friend who took a photo of me at the same time. It loses most of the metadata—but not always! Sometimes it leaves the data for a specific photo out of a series of, say, 7-12 photos. It's unclear why or how it selects such a photo. Dropbox doesn't like edited photos—it adds the edit date as the correct date and duplicates the photo as well. Dropbox doesn't distinguish between digitized photos at all. Here, it completely ignores the date of digitization, editing, etc., and places the photo at the top, assuming the date added to Dropbox. Furthermore, to say that Dropbox is very bad at distinguishing "photos from all pictures" is an understatement. Well, every cloud has its own philosophy. The one in Dropbox doesn't make life easier. The Dropbox gallery can't become my family gallery at all (God forbid, a professional one!) Sensible organization is impossible, and therefore, any search is impossible. If it is, it requires a huge amount of manual work. Dropbox stores photos like a giant garbage bag. Search, and you might find what you're looking for. Interestingly, I've used or still use cloud storage like Flickr, Box, Google Drive, Adobe Cloud (now Lightroom), One Drive, and iCloud (Apple)—on all of these drives, my photos were organized. There were only a few instances where I needed to make adjustments, and they still are. I don't have problems anywhere else—that's why, among other things, I tried transferring from iCloud or One Drive, also through Multicloud. What's most surprising is that the Dropbox manual's page on photo organization is probably the best on the web—very informative and thoroughly knowledgeable—and yet Dropbox itself can't do what it says in its manual. Long explanation, but here it is—with this grim observation, my problem is solved.

Best Regards, Paweł

Hi there, paryzanka49, thanks for your post.

In order for us to assist you further, we'll need a bit more info about your issue.

Can you let us know what you're having trouble with?

Any screenshots of the issue or any error messages would be really helpful as well.

Thanks!