A serious problem with Google Photos spoils the oldest images of some users

A serious Google Photos bug is affecting older backups: different display defects appear in those photos saved with dates like 2012 or 2014. Flaws cause lines and artifacts to appear in images; a generalized problem and that, at the moment, does not have many solutions.

Few file clouds are as versatile and powerful for image storage as Google Photos, the platform became almost the standard to use for Android owners. Even though Google removed the most striking thing about Photos, its unlimited upload of content. Thanks to the high storage capacities, many people have trusted Google with their oldest memories; at the risk of losing them if the files become corrupted.

Artifacts, visual defects and corrupted files

Google Photos would be suffering from a serious global problem that has affected stored content for years. As Scott Miller denounces in the google support forum, there are many people who encounter serious image defects in your photographs from years agoquite a headache for those who entrusted their family treasures to the Google cloud.

According to the samples shared by Google Photos users, the servers would be storing historical photos with serious visual defects. In these images, all with a certain antiquity, artifacts appear on object outlines, undefined areas, smudges and other defects visible to the naked eye. According to the historians consulted, the problem concerns the period between 2012 and 2014; without this being a clear indication of suffering from the problem.

We have been consulting our Google Photos backup, with images and videos saved with dates reaching 2011, and we have not noticed errors in the files. In the support forums they mention that the visual defects appear in the images downloaded from Google Photos, also in those displayed through the platform. However, loading the content into the Google Photos editor, then saving it again, would fix the error.

The error in the files seems to be due to the images being processed by Google Photos, not the ones uploaded at original (and unprocessed) size. Until the problem is cleared up, and Google finds a solution, let’s hope that all the fuss has been caused by some bug on the servers and that the backup copies of Photos have not been corrupted.

More information | Google support
Via | XDA Developers