Oof, I’m not being hyperbolic when I say I hope no one follows this guide. Google Photos json files include metadata that Google may have been stripped from th

Oof, I’m not being hyperbolic when I say I hope no one follows this guide. Google Photos json files include metadata that Google may have been stripped from the original photo or video. Future You will want that metadata. Just use software that knows about those sidecars (like PhotoStructure). Don’t downscale *anything*—the software to downscale (like Google Photos) may delete metadata (like GPS lat/lon and captured-at time) that you’ll be sad is missing later, and whatever seems to be “too many pixels” now will seem just adequate with display technology a decade from now. Videos are enormous compared to still images, but sounds and motion can convey so much of what and how things were happening in that moment, and can be invaluable, depending on the content. New parents: take more video. It depends need to be long: 5-10 seconds is great. Back to TFA: the suggestion to move your photos back to yet another (free?) cloud service? How does this leave you in a better place than before? External HDDs are down to $18/tb (at least in USA, it can be a bit more elsewhere). Unless you’re regularly taking hour-long videos at 4K/60FPS, most avid photographers don’t take more than 1tb/year. My entire 25 year digital collection is < 2TB. *Keep a local backup of your originals*!