So far I found the fastest pipeline to get good results is to use Google Photos editor as a Google One subscriber. Most useful tools are Al sharpen, portrait blur, portrait lightong (not always good). Basic color/brightness tools work great.
Although I do miss some functionality like blur/pixelation brush (for anonymysation of faces and/or car plates), adding a png/ image overlay, colour replacement (and overall better grading tools), curves.
What’s do folks use for photo editing on Android?
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That sounds like a bug!
I upload photos either via sync on Pixel7Pro (taken with the phone or with mirrorless camera) or from laptop via Google Sync. Metadata, exif, location and time are on all photos where it originally has been present.
Using storage saver upload since it’s visually impossible to distinguish from original quality.
I believe the root cause of my issue is the weird way gallery apps behave on modern Android (A12 and A13). My phone is got Samsung’s gallery as the factory-set system gallery, Google Photos is considered third party, this creates lots of issues and I willing to bet metadata vanishing is one of them.