Feature Parity Request: Save a local copy of photos taken within Prime.

OK, I've noticed this issue since redacted went offline and really starting submitting new nominations, as well as additional portal photos, in Prime. When you take a photo in Prime no local copy stays on my device. When I used redacted a copy was saved locally and I had the folder set to backup those photos in my Google Photo account. At first I thought this was due to being on an older, Android 8.0 based Motorola phone, but since I recently upgraded to a Pixel 4 I am experiencing the same issue, with no way to apparently force it to do what I want. On the older Moto device, which only had 2 GB system memory, I had the issue where Prime would crash during the submission process and was even able to recover a photo after a crash and reboot of the device, but only a photo I was trying to add to an existing portal, not any that were taken during a new nomination submission.

I have confirmed in local chats, as well as via Reddit, that others have the same issue on multiple model devices, both Android and iOS. (I can only personally speak to Android, however.) I know that others take the pictures outside of Prime and then submit existing photos during the nomination process, but I find this to a clunky workaround that may not even be possible if you have a limited amount of time for the submission. I also know that I can either look at these photos by following the link in the email I receive confirming the submission or, in the case of new nominations, in my list on Nominations in Wayfarer, but these photos are scaled down and stripped of metadata, making them not particularly useful if I wanted to use them for my own personal records or to share with friends.

What it comes down to is this, I like adding photos to the game. The Ingress Prime app itself already crops photos oddly and scales them down to be not as visually appealing as the original photo. Heck, legacy pictures that were taken via the original Ingress App and Redacted and looked good now display relatively poorly in Prime, but if they were my photos I at least had a copy of the original picture for myself. Now I can't say that.

So, I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds this an issue. Likewise, I am positive this request has been made before, even though the limited search capabilities of the forum here didn't locate anything. Can I get a status on whether anything is being done about the photo functionality? I will even gladly look at a previous post related to this if anyone can link to it. I just need to know if I'm going to have to start looking to go outside Prime when I take my photos from now on or if there is a plan to restore the previous functionality.

Thanks.

Comments

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited January 2020

    100% agreed. I really appreciate having a Ingress folder, with all pictures I have taken with the app, as well as the ones I submitted (proposals and new pictures).

    If I recall well, there was a time that this function was working, but I'm not sure.

    About oddly cropped photos your mentioned, it's really simple actually. The app show only the center of the whole picture, and them crop top and bottom to make it landscape. To avoid messing up new pictures, use your camera grid lines to center it well and prefer to send pictures already in landscape mode, and focus the portal right in the middle.

  • NarfpoitNarfpoit ✭✭
    edited January 2020

    For the last comment on framing the photo, I already have gridlines turned on in my camera, as I pretty much learned photography, rule of thirds and all, early on, so I like to have the guide there. The problem is when you photo is featuring a vertically oriented poi, like a tower or statue, for example. The old scanner was much more tolerant of a portrait oriented object, just pillar-boxing the image, not forcing you to plan everything to be in landscape orientation like Prime. That combined with a vertical oriented POI leaves a very small portion of the frame being dedicated to the object that the portal features. With the scaling down of the resolution of the original photo it really make for a poor visual representation of that POI.

    Don't even get me started on how poorly Prime handles multiple photos per portal. If you have more than 9 or 12 on a popular one, like say the one for NL-1331, Prime totally fails to load it properly. But that's a whole other complaint.

    Post edited by Narfpoit on
  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    Before was better portrait, now is better landscape.

    Before there was ugly black bars everywhere, now have weird zoomed in certain pictures. 🤷🏻‍♀️

  • I would like to have this back too. Someone said there was a reason for it to do with issues with using Sync style uploads on Apple, but surely they could just save the image like normal, and upload immediately as well, instead of writing to drive and then reading off the drive.

    As it is, I tend to take photos and then switch to Ingress, as a habit acquired when my V30 would crash any time I tried to use the direct camera to submit.

  • Definitely agreed. As is, like others, I just take photos and then open Ingress, thanks to the Pixel 3 having virtually 0 RAM and crashing a ton back when prime portal submissions were first introduced.

    It would be really nice to just have it save from Ingress though, save me a step and reduce that friction a tad

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