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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 his photo library over from Google Photos to Dropbox photos. I have not found a more reliable way to do this than to download groups of files from Google Photos, and then to upload them to Dropbox, all through the browser (Chrome on a Mac). When I do this, some files are uploaded and organized by the original date as expected (HEIC, MOV, MP4) ; some other very common formats (PNG, JPG) are not organized as expected, they just are dumped in as if they were brand new images. I have confirmed that the original taken date in these files is still present in the EXIF data after I've downloaded them. Is there a way I can get Dropbox to respect the original date of each image when I upload them?

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Hannah

Hey @frankjp, thanks for reaching out to the Dropbox Community.

Can you please send us a couple of screenshots showing the difference in the metadata of the .heic, .mov etc. files compared to the .png, .jpg ones?

If the photos are still saved to the device, have you tried uploading them automatically using our camera uploads feature instead?

Thanks.

frankjp

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.

Screenshot 2023-10-25 at 2.15.22 PM.png

Hannah

Thanks 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?

frankjp

@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).

frankjp

@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.

Jay

Hi @frankjp, it depends on how the images are being uploaded to the Dropbox account.

If the automatic camera upload feature is being used, then the files would have the correct date and time from the file. If files are being uploaded manually, then it would have the current date and time.

If you're using another app or service, then this could vary depending on how it adds the file to your account.

frankjp

@Jay thanks for your attention. I don't think your comment is accurate, though. I have plenty of files that I downloaded from Google Photos and then uploaded to Dropbox Photos, all through the browser, and many of those are organized by original date as expected. As in the subject field of this thread, initially this seems to be the case for some file types only (.MOV, .HEIC, .MP4). I haven't done "thorough comprehensive testing", but it's definitely not true that all files uploaded manually would have the current date and time, in fact MOST of them are displayed (as expected) using the original date/time to organize. The problem is, it's not just one or two that don't get organized as expected, it's enough that I don't trust the process at all, and even more so, even if I know "manually" the date/time to assign, I can't do it within Dropbox Photos. If I can't get this to work, this could be a dealbreaker for me, I have been a Dropbox customer for many years, and I'm the "Dad and IT Guy" for my family, and I have got to believe pretty close to the target customer for the "Dropbox Family" plans … my #1 storage pain point is that my spouse and kids pile up photos and videos at an alarming rate, and I'm trying to use Dropbox storage that I've paid for to manage these, but if it's a daily hassle for me to manage (as it has been for a few weeks now), at some point I might have to switch to paying Apple or Google however I may not want to. You guys have been great for many years, but I feel like I'm paying for a system that isn't working anymore.