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Uploading Photos to Website keeps EXIF Data for .MOV, .HEIC, .MP4, but not for .PNG or .JPG
I had my son's iPhone backing up photos automatically to Google Photos and he ran out of space. I now have his phone backing up to Dropbox where I have a lot more storage. I'm trying to port much of ...
Thanks for your attention to this Hannah. These images are not on the device (iPhone). They are only in the "Cloud" in Google Photos. Here's a screenshot from a PNG image, showing the original date in Sept 2022. In Google Photos in the browser, this is shown organized in that month. When I upload this to Dropbox Photos, it drops it in as the latest image (I'm guessing it's using the mac file 'modified' date when I downloaded it from Google Photos. This happens with PNGs and JPGs. It does not happen with HEIC, MOV, MP4 files.
Hannah
Dropbox Community Moderator
Dropbox Community ModeratorThanks for the update, frankjp.
Can you try to test and see if this is caused after the photos are uploaded and downloaded from Google Photos?
@Hannah, the problem is that when I download some images from Google Photos, and then upload them to Dropbox Photos, the Original Creation Date of the image is not always 'respected'. When I download the images in question from Google Photos, I can confirm that original creation date is within the EXIF data, and within the Google Photos UI, that date is used if I re-upload that photo to Google Photos (even to a different Google account). But if I upload this image to Dropbox Photos, the original creation date is ignored and the photo is added as if it were brand new (I believe what's being used is the date the file was downloaded from Google Photos). There's no way in the Dropbox Photos UI for me to verify that the EXIT original creation date is intact (I don't believe any such info is visible in Dropbox Photos for any image). A big part of the value proposition of ANY photo-management system is the automatic organization of image by the date they were originated, not moved or uploaded or downloaded. I'm trying to use my Dropbox Family account as our primary photo archiving system, but these shortcomings are making it unreliable and difficult to use. Any workarounds would be appreciated. Even if I could directly change the date applied to each image in Dropbox Photos, that would be clunky, but I might be able to work around this. Right now, I'm stuck with large groups of images that have the right date in the file, but Dropbox won't sort them by when they were created.
- Nancy
Hey frankjp, hope it’s OK to jump in here.
Out of curiosity, do you have the desktop app installed on your Mac device? If yes, I’d like you to add couple of these files within the local Dropbox folder instead, and let me know if the original date keeps being altered (both locally and on the web account, after the files have synced).
Nancy thanks for your attention. I do have the Dropbox desktop app on my Mac. The files in question, however, are not "my" files, they are my son's files, I have a Dropbox Family account, so I am hoping you are considering use cases like this. He has an iPhone. I had it set up to use Google Photos for backing up photos instead of iCloud. He ran out of space on Google Photos. I already have been using Dropbox for many years, and some time ago I upgraded to a family account and I am trying to use that storage for his photos. I have the Dropbox app on his phone; it works "okay" in backing up his photos (not great - - it only syncs if you launch the Dropbox app, I was hoping it would be 100% automatic, my son is a teen). So, that is syncing any new photos. But I am trying to clear out some space in his Google Photos account, and I was hoping to do this by downloading batches from his Google Photos and uploading them to his Dropbox account/area which is part of my family account. I already have my own Dropbox setup on my Mac which I have been using for years, and I don't want to intermingle his photos with any of my files if I can help it. Shouldn't I be able to upload images to Dropbox Photos and have them "land" properly organized by the original date? I feel like this is a sensible expectation based on the UI that's presented.
