It’s way too hard to get my Pixel’s Raws from Google Photos

Image: Google

Picture this: you just bought a Google Pixel 9 Pro and have been shooting pictures with it all day. Because you’re a photographer, one of the first things you did was turn on Raw + JPEG, so you’d have as much editing latitude as possible. You sit down at your computer, navigate to the Google Photos site, select all the photos you just took, hit download, and…

… discover that you now have a folder full of JPEGs without a Raw in sight. It turns out that there’s no easy way to bulk download JPEG + Raw pairs from Google Photos; instead, you have to go to each picture individually, click the triple dot menu button, then hit “Download all 2 photos.” Repeat that process for 40 photos, and you’ll have 40 zip files that you’ll then have to uncompress to finally get your JPEG and DNG files.

?Using Google Photos to get Raw files shot on a Google phone is a massive pain

In other words, getting the Raw files you shot with your Google phone out of Google Photos is a massive pain – something we discovered as we were shooting galleries for the new Pixel 9 phones. The difficulty in bulk downloading Raw files took us by surprise, because we remembered it being so much easier with previous iterations of the phone.

To be clear, it’s not that we’re just fools who can’t find an obvious button; Google Photos’ management of Raws is a common complaint on forums like Reddit and Google Community. Google’s own AI told us that bulk downloading wasn’t possible. (To make sure it wasn’t missing something or hallucinating, we also looked at the support documentation the old-fashioned way and found it mum on the subject of Raw downloads.)

Google Gemini essentially told me to look elsewhere. Also, PicBackMan has 1.8 stars on TrustPilot.

If you happen to be using Windows, you can get around this by plugging your phone into your computer with a USB cable and then using Windows Explorer to access the files and copy them to your computer. With macOS, it’s a lot harder. If you can get Apple’s Image Capture app to recognize the Pixel (and that’s a big ‘if’ based on our testing), you can use it to get the Raws onto your computer. However, you’ll have to navigate through a massive list of photos you likely didn’t even know were on your phone and that don’t seem to be in any discernible order. Oh, and your deleted photos will show up there, too, alongside MP3s and other mysterious file types such as DB-WAL, DB-SHM, and EXOs.

Pictured: Apple’s Image Capture struggling with the Pixel 9’s file structure. Not pictured: a good photo management experience.

There are almost certainly workarounds to this problem. You could use a different service to sync your pictures, such as Dropbox or Lightroom, if you pay for those. You could set up an automation on your phone to move the Raws from Google Photos to Google Drive, where you can bulk download them or even automatically sync them with your computer. And, because the Pixel runs Android, there are probably dozens of GitHub projects meant to solve this exact issue.

However, I’d argue that it’s ridiculous that you need a workaround in the first place. (And yes, I’m counting having to physically plug your phone into a computer as a ridiculous workaround because it’s 2024, not 2004.) You should be able to download your Raws from Google Photos without having to go one-by-one, especially since the problem stems from using Google’s own photography-centric phone.

Apple handles Raw files shot on its phones much better than Google does

What makes the whole situation more annoying is that, to my genuine shock, Apple handles Raw files shot on its phones much better than Google does. Getting at them on a Mac is obvious; if you’re syncing your photos with iCloud, they’ll automatically be added to the Photos app.

Unbelievably, getting your iCloud photos on Windows is almost as easy. The iCloud for Windows app will automatically sync your photos – including Raws – to your computer. If you’re using someone else’s computer and can’t install an app, you can go to the iCloud Photos website and batch-download them from there. In other words, Apple’s system works exactly how I expected Google’s to.

Apple Photos can sync straight to Windows Photos, Raws and all.

That’s not to say that Apple’s system is perfect. If you use Apple Photos to back up Raws from other cameras, it’s very difficult to get them from a Windows machine. But while someone has probably had to deal with that scenario at some point, it’s a substantially more niche use case than just trying to offload Raws you took on your phone. (And that in itself is already a niche workflow.) And if you don’t use iCloud Photos, you will be left reaching for a cable or using AirDrop. But the point still stands that Apple’s photo system handles Raws with far more grace than Google’s.

Hopefully, that fact is a wake-up call to Google. In theory, this problem could be entirely solved by the addition of a ‘Download Raws’ button that’s available when you have multiple images selected in Google Photos. Until then, anyone who wants to shoot Raw on their Pixel should know that they’re setting themselves up to jump through some hoops if they ever want to get those Raws on a computer.

On a completely unrelated note, check out our Pixel 9 Pro or Pixel 9 Pro Fold sample galleries to see how Google’s newest smartphone cameras stack up.

Our DPREVIEW Tribute:

After nearly 25 years of operation, DPReview closed on 10 April 2023. This difficult decision was part of the annual operating plan review that parent company, Amazon, shared earlier this year.

Over the course of 25 years, DP Review built up a reputation as being one of the most informative places to go for information about that new camera or lens you’re after. DP Review began as an independent reviews site based in the UK in 1998, the brainchild of Philip and Joanna Askey, but it was eventually purchased by Amazon in 2007 and relocated over to Seattle in the USA in 2010.

Cheers DPReview – thanks for the great work and content that guided photographers, videographers and techno junkies the world over!