Achim Maier
The Google Photos app now automatically backs up RAW images, 9to5Google reports. Editors discovered a new banner on a Google Pixel 8 that had previously captured RAW images with the Pixel Camera app. It read: “New RAW photos will appear in the Photos view and will now be backed up.” RAW images that already exist on the Pixel smartphone will not be uploaded automatically.
When you take a RAW photo, a JPEG version is also saved and automatically uploaded to Google Photos. If you take a lot of images in RAW format, the Google One storage can quickly fill up, as the RAW format stores uncompressed data and the space required is correspondingly high. Not to mention that uploading also uses more data.
9to5Google also reports that the Google Photos app displays the uploaded image in the main Photos tab labeled “RAW” in the top right corner. The JPEG file is considered part of the “Burst”. When you open a RAW file, a toggle appears at the bottom that allows you to switch between JPEG and RAW.
The options are also different depending on the file type. A RAW image can be “Set as main photo” or “Keep this photo only”. For JPEG files you can “Export this photo” or “Keep this photo only”. If you have limited Google One storage, it’s worth switching to JPEG format. Because so far there is no easy way to restrict the automatic uploading of RAW images to Google Photos.
