Williams Welsh
Member
If you're planning to back up your entire Google Photos library, keeping the original quality intact is usually the top priority, and it's a fair concern since a lot of people don't realize their photos might have been stored in "Storage saver" (compressed) quality depending on when they were uploaded. The good news is that downloading through Google Takeout preserves whatever quality your photos were originally saved in; it doesn't compress anything further during export. So if your photos were uploaded in original quality, that's exactly what you'll get back. The catch is checking your storage settings beforehand, since older accounts or older uploads might already be in a compressed format that Takeout can't magically restore. It's also worth being mindful of file size limits during export, since very large libraries can take a while to process and download, and splitting things into smaller batches by date range can help avoid interrupted or corrupted downloads. If you want a complete walkthrough on how to export your library while making sure you're getting the best possible quality your account has stored, this guide on how to download all photos from Google Photos covers the full process along with tips for checking your upload settings ahead of time so nothing gets lost along the way.