Working With RAW Photos On Android Could Soon Be A Whole Lot Less Of A Nuisance (APK Teardown)
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google is preparing to change how RAW images are handled.
- A string of code in version 9.8 of the Pixel Camera says “RAW photos will not be backed up by default.”
- DNG images could be saved in a separate RAW Images folder.
If you take photography seriously, you probably shoot with RAW enabled. RAW is great because it captures all the image data from your camera without compressing it. As you can imagine, this image format takes up a lot of space, which means it can quickly eat up your local storage and the storage you have on Google Photos. However, we may soon be in store for a change that could solve this problem.
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Currently, Google handles RAW files by grouping them together with JPGs. If you have automatic backup enabled, both image formats are backed up together to Google Photos. This can be frustrating as backing up RAW files can take up space, time, and data.
Looking into version 9.8 of the Pixel Camera app, we noticed Google made a small tweak to a string of code. The new string says:
Show option to turn on RAW+JPEG in the viewer. RAW files preserve details and offer more controls while editing. They take up more storage space. RAW photos will not be backed up by default.
Previously, the last sentence in this string read, “RAW photos will be backed up by default if automatic backup is enabled in Google Photos.” So it looks like RAW photos will no longer be backed up by default, saving your valuable Google Photos storage.
Another common problem with RAW files on Pixel devices is that the photo picker doesn’t show you which file is which. So if you try to upload an image to an app, like Instagram, you won’t know what type of photo you’re uploading. You’d have to go into the Google Photos app and upload from there to Instagram if you need to know the difference. Additionally, there are few places where RAW is supported.
Upon further investigation into the Pixel Camera app, we came across evidence that suggests DNG images could be placed into a RAW Images folder. The left image above features the old code and the right image shows the new code. With JPGs and RAW files separated into different folders, this could solve the problem of RAW images appearing haphazardly in the share sheet.
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