I compared checksums of (recently uploaded)
1) original source images
2) result of clicking "Download" in the Web UI
3) what was contained in my most recent Takeout
And they all match. There might be issues with the API (didn't check), but that API is VERY limited anyway.
Someone recommended the github project called Timeliner to help me get the photos though. I just haven’t tried it yet.
https://github.com/mholt/timeliner
Timeliner is a personal data aggregation utility.
It collects all your digital things from pretty much
anywhere and stores them on your own computer, indexes
them, and projects them onto a single, unified timeline.
Supported data sources
* Google Location History
* Google PhotosHowever, it has tons of metadata files, empty folders, etc. I highly suggest unticking 'preserve directory structure' when unpacking.
Now, when I was just browsing the zips, it was folder after folder of junk I didn't even recognize, I guess metadata files of some sort. Rather than do all that, at least in Gnome, when I unzip it has an option of 'preserve directory structure' that I unchecked, which basically gets rid of all the folders. From there I was easily able to mass remove all the json and other non-photo files, leaving only the photos behind. Good luck.
This is because of a change they made.
I was absolutely distraught tbh. The feeling of being at the mercy of google is a horrible feeling. Especially when there is zero support or assistance.
I received links to over 100 tgz files (4GB each), and checked a couple. Each had JPG files and JSON files with extra metadata ("geoDataExif", "geoData" (inferred from my location history?), "title", "description", etc).
I can't tell if the actual images are the originals I uploaded, but I can confirm the images were archived as actual images, and in a serviceable format/structure.
I also remember when I left Facebook and asked for an archive of my photos, I got 800x600 images when I had uploaded much higher resolution ones. Service degradation is actually more common in FAANG because they have a massive moat and rely on the fact that 90% of their customers don't know their 1's from their 0's.