Windows Phone 8.1 will now backup your High Resolution Lumia photos to OneDrive

Windows Phone 8.1 backup

When it comes to Windows Phone 8.i, Microsoft has gone a long manner in fixing many pet peeves of users. One of those pertained to those with a Nokia Lumia 1020, Lumia 1520 or Lumia Icon. Those users take the power with the Nokia Photographic camera app to shoot 'high resolution' photos, taking advantage of their corresponding 41 MP and 20 MP cameras. Simply auto-backups using OneDrive would merely salvage the lower resolution 5 MP one, leaving the loftier-resolution version on the device. Not skilful.

As many of you have noticed over the last few weeks, Windows Phone 8.one will now save those loftier resolution photos. Nosotros've finally gotten around to taking a look at information technology ourselves, and here are our findings.

How it works

On the Lumia 1020, Lumia 1520 and Lumia Icon, you can shoot dual images. One is for the small 5 MP JPGs, and the other is for the larger 16 MP (Lumia 1520/Icon) or 34 MP (Lumia 1020) JPGs for re-cropping and better editing options. Both photos get saved to the phone, with a smaller one perfect for social-sharing and the larger ones for after editing, re-zooming, etc.

The trouble on Windows Phone eight.0

If a user enabled auto-back upwards under Settings > Applications > Photos + Camera with the Wi-Fi option, merely the smaller photos were saved and not the larger 5-8 MB photos. Sure your epitome was backed up, and those five MP images are over-sampled from the high quality ones, but not saving the full resolution JPGs was a scrap of a bummer.

OneDrive auto-backup

Windows Phone 8.ane and auto-backup

Now, with viii.1 many of you accept observed that when enabling the 'Best Quality' pick under 'backup to OneDrive', the high resolution images are rightly saved to your OneDrive Camera ringlet. Interestingly, the file name does not accept 'high_res' in it every bit it was saved on the device, instead it has the regular 'WP_ date_ time_Pro.jpg' format.

*This will also work on the soonhoped-for-released Nokia Lumia 930 too.

Only notwithstanding no DNG/RAW support

Unfortunately, you lot however cannot auto-fill-in your optional DNG/RAW images to OneDrive. Those file types are used past pros who similar to post-edit on a PC using Photoshop, and having them saved to your OneDrive would certainly streamline the process.

Yous can ever backup manually past commencement transferring the DNG files to a PC then uploading to OneDrive, but not via the phone itself. Considering those individual files are 20 MB or more, that's probably okay for most people. The limiting factor here seems to be that OneDrive doesn't support viewing of DNG files direct, so the organisation doesn't really leverage that file type only even so.

Watch your file space

Equally a result of the change, if you're already using car-backup and high quality, your photos on a Lumia 1020 will increase from around 4-5 MB to x-12 MB in size. Although most of you have at least 7-x GB of storage, just take notice that these images will starting time to accept up more space, so go on track if yous already have a lot of files saved to the deject!

Beware of OneDrive app limitations

If y'all determine not to use auto-fill-in to OneDrive, you lot can of class employ the OneDrive app to save your photos. Unfortunately from our tests, this will save merely the lower resolution one and not the loftier resolution photograph. That means for those with high resolution cameras, your best bet is to utilise automobile-backup and manage your saves through OneDrive straight.

Wrapping it upwards

As yous can see, Windows Phone eight.1 does a lot to ameliorate user grievances. By allowing high resolution images to be auto-backed up, high-terminate Lumia users can have solace in knowing that their precious images will be saved without thought, ordinarily inside a minute of snapping the photo (assuming they're on Wi-Fi).

Not being able to practise the aforementioned with DNG files is slightly understandable, though we promise to run across that come every bit well in the future. Likewise for the OneDrive app, which is still very limited in functions for most users' tastes.

Are you using auto-backup for your photos? Has the new feature in Windows Phone 8.i fabricated you reconsider using it? Let u.s. know.

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