You can do whatever you’d like with them, but photos deleted from Google Drive will no longer be removed from Photos. If you used Google photos before last July, any photos that were synced until the minute Google turned off the functionality will remain in your folder. The photos in your Google Photos folder in Google Drive won’t be deleted, but new ones won’t be added anymore. Any photo or video that resides in both places will take up twice the space. If you opt for Original Quality, however, Google Photos will use some of the space in your Google Drive to store your library, even though you won’t be able to see or access the photos. Like before, Google will store high-quality photos and videos in Photos for free, so they won’t affect the space in your Google Drive. Here and your options are for creating a backup that keeps your photos and metadata intact: Google Drive Storage Since Photos no longer includes an option to sync with Google Drive, keeping a rolling backup of your photos is going to take some work. Google Photos is one of the best ways to sync and store the picture you take on your phone, but getting them out of your library is another story-especially if you want to keep your metadata (date, time, caption, etc.).
