Google Pixel 3a - Original Quality Vs High Quality - Google Photos Backup



I have used Google's new mid-range smartphone, the Pixel 3a XL, since early may. Everything about the phone has been great, especially the camera, which is nearly identical in quality to Google's flagship smartphone, the Pixel 3. The Pixel 3a and 3a XL take stunning, unbelievably good photos starting at only $400.



My only complaint is that, unlike the original Pixel, Pixel 2 and Pixel 3, Google decided to give 3a owners only unlimited free "High Quality" photo backups, as compared to free "Original Quality" for the rest of the Pixel lineup. You can read about the specific differences here, but basically, images are slightly compressed and videos are heavily compressed.



Now, the Google Photos service isn't limited to its own phones. I've been using it with various phones for years and have really enjoyed it. And anyone can pay for Original Quality backup, but it is free with Google's flagship Pixel phones.



In this post, I'm going to show you the actual quality differences between a number of photos with different subjects and settings. Also one video example, because that's all that's needed. Then I'll talk a bit about if this should all matter to you and what you can do to preserve the original quality of your photos.

‍ Image Comparison - High Quality Vs Original Quality Below are image comparisons, each of the same photo, uncropped and cropped. The image on the left is the photo backed up directly from my Pixel 3a XL, the one on the right was backed up to Google Photos with the "High Quality" setting selected. Each uncropped image displays the original photo's full-size in Megabytes, showing the compression benefits of Google's backup solution. If you are viewing this post on a phone, you'll probably want to view in landscape mode to better see the details.

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Close-up Shots

Uncropped, it's nearly impossible to see any difference in the image of the Lego cactus boy. This is basically the case for all the photos when viewed at full size.

Viewed at 100% crop, the subtle differences can be seen. A lot of the fine texture and grain on the plastic arms is lost. The gradient on the shadow on the sides of his face gets blurred with Jpeg artifacts. The file is significantly reduced in size but it shows when zoomed in. Otherwise, there isn't much lost in terms of quality.

Shadows are not a friend to compression, and are the only apparent degradation in quality in this shot, despite the large decrease in file size.

I really had to look hard to find any difference in quality for the butterfly photo. Zoomed in all the way, there are some small differences in texture in the shadows on the leaves.

Again, it's really hard to spot any difference in this close-up shot. Google does a great job of preserving all the details while making the file a lot smaller.

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Indoor Shots

Ok, enough close-ups (as cool as they look). Here is a grocery store produce section with oodles of detail. The Pixel 3a does a fantastic job capturing all the details and various colors. And Google Photo's compression keeps all of it while cutting the file size in half.

Zoomed in, there is a small loss of texture on the grey banana stand, but that's about all I can spot.

OK, finally, some real discernible differences in this art installation of a car wreck. At full-size, it looks like the hue of the shadow under the hood is shifted towards red just a tad.

Cropped, the differences are more obvious. Major loss of fine grain and plenty of added Jpeg artifacting among the shadows under the hood. Not a huge deal, but significantly more compared to the previous examples.

Woah, in this shot, there is plenty of compression, which is really visible zoomed in. The aggressive compression on the seemingly simple planes of billiard felt and wood really drains a lot of the detail from the shot.

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Daytime Shots

Really no appreciable difference here with the ball game shot. Compressed to less than half the size though.

Hmm... This is something new... A large file size, for both Original and High Quality images. Google doesn't compress this overcast shot very much. I wonder why. There are plenty of details in the shot, but the sky is full of grey clouds. I'm not an image compression expert, so I wouldn't know why this shot is so different from the others in terms of file size.

As for quality differences between the two file sizes, the biggest thing I can spot is some artifacting in the shadows of the LOVE sculpture.

This shot isn't compressed much. Finely detailed textures are reduced a bit on the horse's coat.

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Evening/Night Shots

Hardly anything is changed in this fairly dark shot with plenty of details, despite the size being roughly cut in half. There are some signs of compression, like in the clouds and the dark gray blocks on the left, but that's about it.

Ooh, a dark closeup shot. This image was taken using the Pixel's Night Sight mode. It takes multiple images and combines them, just like the normal photo mode, but the exposures are longer to capture more light and detail.

This image still has a lot of noise when zoomed in, like most night shots. Despite the relatively high compression, very little detail is lost. Just a bit in the tablecloth mostly.

Oh hey!! Another image with some actually significant degradation! Yay! In all seriousness though, here's an image with differences that are fairly easy to spot at 100% crop.

There are plenty of Jpeg artifacts in the clouds. The tall skyscrapers suffer a lot, with many large and blurry Jpeg chunks replacing fine details. The shadows of the trees lose nearly all detail. All of the fine grain in the grass and street is replaced with smudginess. Not good. The one big upside though, is the file size is greatly reduced to one fifth of the original's size. That's great, but I don't think it's worth the loss of detail in this case. I'm not sure why Google Photos decided to compress this image so much, especially compared to the dark dam/waterfall scene.

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Video

I'm not going to spend a bunch of time on video, because the compression parameters really say enough. All video is compressed down to 1080p, Full HD. So if you decide to take nice 4K video, you'll be downgraded to 1080p if you choose free unlimited, High Quality backups. That's a quarter the resolution of 4K, with plenty of compression artifacts to boot. I have one example to show you below, taken from the same frame of the original 4K video and the compressed 1080p video downloaded from Google Photos.

Ugh, the High Quality video frame looks so blurry. It takes the nice, image-like quality of the 4K and squeezes all the juiciness out, like overcooking all of the deliciousness out of a quality burger.

🤮 Oh man, I think I'm actually going to be sick! Zoomed in all the way on the High Quality video still, we get to see Smudge City in all its horrendous glory. Just... NO... Of course, videos (especially 4K) take up a bunch more storage space, so I understand why Google wouldn't want to offer unlimited uncompressed video backup. But this is just bad and is the biggest mark against Google's otherwise excellent free photo backup service.

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Final Thoughts and Suggestions

That was a fun trip through a variety of photos, but visually, there isn't much difference between Google's Original Quality and High Quality backup options (at least for photos). Most of the images have minuscule, negligible differences in quality all while significantly reducing the file size. Kudos to Google for that. But that's mostly to Google's benefit in saving storage space on their servers.



There are some significant differences in a handful of shots like Lego cactus man, car wreck, pool table and the skyline sunset. But those would really only matter if you cropped the photos a lot. By and large, Google Photos does an excellent job of compressing images while losing little, if any details. All that for free (well, monetarily at least), isn't a bad deal. I like knowing that my photos are backed up to the cloud minutes or even seconds after I take them, and that gives me peace of mind. As for videos, well, a crummy backup is better than no backup at all.



Now, I wouldn't want my photos backed up to one location that I have no real control over. The cloud is just one part of having a solid backup plan. And with storage so cheap, why wouldn't you have a physical backup? Really, you should have at least one cloud backup and two physical backups stored in different locations. For me, one is my desktop PC and another is a portable hard drive in a safe.



When I had the original Google Pixel, my photos would back up in Original Quality to Google Photos and then download automatically to my PC. I didn't have to touch anything, which was really convenient. With the budget Pixel 3a, Google removed the perk of free Original Quality backups. I really wish they didn't. It added a lot of value to using a Pixel phone. But I still wholeheartedly recommend the phone to anyone that wants a great camera experience without spending close to a grand on a smartphone. You'll just have to manually backup your photos (and even more importantly videos). It's a small hassle, but personally, I think it's worth it.



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