Where are edited photos stored?

Question

The Camera app stores photos in some DCIM folder, and these can easily be accessed to attach to an email message, or to download to a pc over an USB cable.

In the Photos app, I can edit a photo, and save it as a separate photo file, and can see it among the unedited photo's and attach it to emails.

However, those edited photos are not visible over the USB connection, and cannot be downloaded to a pc.

It seems as if only the Camera app can store in the DCIM folders, but other apps can read files from that folder. Is it true that other apps cannot store in DCIM? Is the photo editor part of the Camera app? I did not yet try other photo editor apps.

Related problem is that the app Kopie ID from the dutch government cannot store the edited photo of an ID in DCIM so that you cannot upload it in a browser web app. (Purpose of this app is to be able to black out unneeded sensitive info, and to add a watermark)

I guess that android tries to play it more safe than good old unix / dos, where the file is the basic unit of info and the directory structure allows for very flexible file sharing between arbitrary apps.

Thanks for any hints on sharing files between phone and pc, and between apps.

Answer 1

Photos edited via com.google.android.apps.photos aka Google Photos are stored directly to your Google photos (cloud) storage, that's the reason it doesnt appear over MTP or via file managers.

On PC, open https://photos.google.com/ on a web browser to access them.

Any app could technically store data in /storage/emulated/<user-id>/DCIM

I guess that android tries to play it more safe than good old unix / dos, where the file is the basic unit of info and the directory structure allows for very flexible file sharing between arbitrary apps.

See, you must understand that unlike UNIX/Linux the majority of Android users aren't powerusers so Google definitely has some directory-level restrictions for users as well as apps and this is done for security purposes. However as I stated above, to the best of my knowledge, no restrictions have been imposed over /storage/emulated/<user-id>/DCIM

Answer 2

This is what I found out recently. Android has the concept of app specific storage versus shared storage, see: https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage . Apparently, apps have a preference of storing in app specific storage. A reason might be that using shared storage may be harder, because cooperation with other apps may be needed.

But there is a way to move or copy your photos from app specific storage to shared storage, in order to make those accessible to your PC over an USB cable. When viewing your screenshot image, just move it upwards to see the information block below the image, where you can add a description, view details, but also select options like Back Up Now, Move to folder, Copy to folder, Add to album, etc.

When selecting Move/Copy to Folder, click SD Card Folders , where you can create a new folder, or select an existing folder. These are shared folders that you can access from the PC over USB.

On the phone, the shared folder 'myscreenshots' on the SD card is internally known as this, by clicking the SD-card icon in the header when showing this folder:

file://storage/CA26-07E6/Pictures/myscreenshots

On the (linux) PC, this folder shows up in the file explorer as:

Unisoc Phone / Pictures / myscreenshots