@delroth I've noticed something that might be related. this may explain how they can have the "save vs save as" option when making small changes like a crop or "enhance" photo edits. If you pick save, it doesn't make a new file but must save the image adjustment data in a similar manner. I'm sure digging into a larger data sample size could turn up some more info
@Crazypedia that's the Google Photos crop tool which I'm pretty sure is different from the screenshot crop tool (and not vulnerable).