Want to know the best apps for uploading photos to Facebook without losing quality ? If you're a photographer, you know that one of the biggest challenges you face after a photoshoot is sharing the images you've taken without losing quality. This loss of quality occurs when the resolution decreases.
To solve this problem, we want to help you forward the photos you took to all your friends. That's why we present you this list with the best Apps to upload photos without losing quality. So that not a single pixel is lost when you transfer the image from your computer to Facebook or vice versa.
What are the best apps for uploading photos without losing quality?
We've conducted extensive research and analysis across the web to bring you a list of the best apps for sending photos without loss of quality, so you can upload them to your social networks without any loss of quality.
Here you can read about: How to Create a Color Sample with Photoshop
- Photo size.
- Transfer request.
- Reduce and compress photos.
- Resize photo.
- Compress and resize photos.
1. Photo Size
The first app on the list for uploading photos without losing quality is Photo Size . This app lets you quickly and easily resize an image to any size you want (with limitations).
You can specify the output format using one of the following four units of measurement: pixels, millimeters, centimeters, inches. To maintain the aspect ratio , click the chain icon between the width and height input fields.
Photo rating and evaluation
We tried it and it's good, but it's missing one surefire thing, like a button to turn on/off image proportions when resizing, it's VERY necessary, sometimes we want to change the measurements of images without keeping the original proportions. Only with this you would have 5 stars.
2. Transfer Application
The second app on the list of best apps for uploading photos without losing quality is Transfer Application . This app lets you transfer, share, and save photos and videos from your Android device to your computer, as well as exchange photos to and from another Android, iPhone , or iPad using your Wi-Fi network.
Access to a WiFi network is required for this app to work. Some public WiFi networks, such as those in hotels or public areas, are set to block communication between devices. To switch between devices, both devices must have this app installed.
Download Transfer Application here
3. Simple mobile photo resizer
The third app we're featuring for uploading photos without losing quality, so you can send an image to Facebook, is Simple Mobile Photo Resizer . Simple Mobile Photo Resizer lets you easily reduce the size of your photos without losing quality. The resized images are automatically stored in the 'Images / SimplePhotoResizer' directory.
After resizing the apps, it allows you to easily send much smaller images via email, MMS, SMS or share them on Flickr, Facebook, Google+, etc.
Download here Reduce and compress photos
4. Photo Resizer
Next on the list of the best apps for uploading photos without losing quality is Photo Resizer. It allows you to reduce, crop, shrink, and resize JPEG and PNG images to the exact pixels, percentage, or aspect ratio you specify for posting on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr, or any other social network to meet size requirements.
5. Lite Photo
The last and fifth of the best Apps to upload photos without losing quality that we present to you so that you can reduce the size of the photos and send them anywhere without losing quality is the compression and resizing of photos.
Lite Photo helps you quickly reduce image size or resolution. Optimize your images with the perfect balance between quality and file size. Lite Photo is also a very easy-to-use app for cropping and rotating your photos.
Lite Photo uses smart lossy compression techniques to reduce the file size of your photos. Selectively reducing the number of colors in the image, requiring fewer bytes to store the data.
How to upload photos without losing quality on Facebook
What is the best way to prepare your images to minimize the degradation of the quality of photos posted on Facebook? Thanks to several image upload tests, we tried to answer this main question and many others related to this issue…
To ensure that your photos uploaded to Facebook are not of (too) poor quality:
- What image format do you prefer (JPEG or PNG)?
- How does the “High Quality” option work in albums?
- What is its real impact on photo quality?
- What are Facebook's recommendations on this issue?
- What is the real value of these official Facebook tips when faced with concrete evidence?
- How do you maintain perfection when uploading photos without losing Facebook quality?
If you are one of those who are in a hurry and are just looking for recipes to improve the quality of your Facebook photos without needing an explanation, you can skip to the last part.
In this part of the article, we will talk about photos to upload to an album and those to publish directly on your Facebook wall (in the newspaper). On the other hand, we will not address (or only very little) the case of cover and profile photos.
Poor quality of Facebook images
If you're one of Facebook's 31 million active users, you've probably already noticed that image quality on Facebook isn't the social network's strong point.
It must be said that according to an official document published by the firm in 2021, an average of 350 million photos are downloaded every day on Facebook (and it is very likely that this figure has increased even more since then)... so much so that this must have a significant cost for the company in terms of storage space and bandwidth.
We can easily understand that Facebook drastically reduces the weight of images uploaded to the platform by systematically compressing the files…the obvious counterpart of this practice is an inevitable loss in the quality of the images: pixelation of the photos, visible edges in contrasted areas, flat colors in gradients: in short, all the symptoms of a very strong JPEG compression (the most universally used image format).
Official Facebook tips for uploading photos without losing quality
Here is a screenshot of the advice given by Facebook to keep your photos in the best possible quality. Knowing that these tips are not very accurate, we urge you to read the comments that accompany them and refer to the next chapter that provides important additional information.
After specifying that photos uploaded to Facebook are “resized and formatted,” Facebook offers 4 tips:
1 – To upload photos without losing quality, resize your photos to widths supported by Facebook
Resize your photo to one of the supported sizes below:
Classic photos: 720, 960 or 2048 pixels (width).
Reading the introduction and this sentence, you might think that submitting a photo of a width other than those recommended by Facebook will result in a systematic resize, but this is not actually the case. Only photos whose widest edge exceeds 2048 pixels will be reduced to this maximum dimension of 2048 pixels.
2 – To upload photos without losing quality of 2048 pixels, check the High quality option
If you are using a 2048 pixel photo, select the High Quality option when uploading.
What is not specified here is that this option is only visible in Facebook photo albums (you won't have it to add photos directly to your diary). You must activate it the first time you create an album: the option will remain for the following hours.
If you haven't already, you can enable the option by following these steps:
- Step 1:: In the registration, click on the link «Photo / video«:
- Step 2:: Choose to create an album.
- Step 3:: In the next window «send the file«, we advise you to choose a single image to download. Once in the album, delete this first image that will have been downloaded without the option and then check the option «High Quality» (left side).
- Step 4:: Now that the option «High Quality» is enabled, you can upload the images to your Facebook album.
Later in the article, we talk in detail about this option and, in particular, the consequences on downloaded photos if the option is not checked.
3 – For the cover photo, upload a file less than 100 KB
To avoid compression when uploading your cover photo, please use a file size under 100KB.
While it's not really the focus of this article, just a word about this tip regarding cover photos. A quick test with a photo prepared with the recommended dimensions ( 851 x 315 pixels ) and a size of less than 100 KB ( in the test it was 75,3 KB ) reduced it to only 55,2 KB after uploading it to Facebook… the file has therefore been compressed even further.
The facts therefore contradict this judgment. This advice may have been valid in the past, but it is obviously no longer of any use today.
We once thought that this advice was not limited to the cover photo, but the tests also proved the opposite. In short, a phrase to forget…
4 – To upload photos without losing quality, prepare your photos in JPEG format with an sRGB color profile
Save your photo in JPEG format with an sRGB color profile. This is a general tip that's very useful for photos shared online (not just on Facebook):
- In order for the photos to be displayed on the Internet, the JPEG format will be a good choice: if the compression is not excessive, the quality will be available for a very reasonable file size. However, apart from photos, you should keep in mind that for simpler images without too many colour tones (diagrams, illustrations, posters, etc.), the PNG format will generally be more efficient than the JPEG (text quality is better preserved for a generally identical or lower weight).
- Another wise tip, for your images, choose the sRGB color space (Facebook used the English terminology, sRGB which stands for "standard red green blue") or "sRGB" (RGB for red green blue). In fact, it is the color space that will be best managed in the context of the Internet (not to mention the problems of calibrating screens, with this space, the risk of displaying bad colors will be more limited).
Test results for uploading photos without losing quality on Facebook
Since Facebook's advice on preserving photo quality is sparse, if not rather approximate, and since the Internet contains recommendations that are sometimes confusing or even contradictory, I wanted to take stock by means of concrete tests.
So by uploading to Facebook (created albums, images added to the diary) many photos with different characteristics (format, dimensions, compression, etc.) and then retrieving the images to see the transformations operated by Facebook algorithms.
In addition to the first part, here are the other lessons that can be learned from these tests.
Systematic compression to upload photos without losing quality on Facebook
Whatever the dimensions and size of your image file, your photo will inevitably have been through the mill of Facebook's image processing algorithms : even if in most cases the original dimensions (or even the next size up) are maintained, the image file will be reworked to be compressed (the initial size of your file will be reduced upon download). As we've seen, even when Facebook advertises that it isn't doing any compression (cover photo under 100 KB), the reality is quite different…
On the other hand, you should keep in mind that the "High quality" option available in albums does not change the compression rate applied to the images at all . We'll see later that this option only affects the maximum dimensions of your photos.
Given this observation, we therefore advise you to maintain the highest quality for your JPEG files before uploading them to Facebook : this will limit image degradation. In fact, if you upload a file that is already compressed, Facebook will compress it again (regardless of its size). With a destructive format like JPEG, double compression means double the degradation of your image.
What sizes to choose to upload photos without losing quality on Facebook
During testing, we noticed that the compression rate varied little depending on the photo's dimensions (for each uploaded photo, I tested eight different sizes, ranging from 640 x 427 pixels for the smallest to 3000 x 2000 pixels for the largest). However, we visually found that larger photos performed better than smaller ones.
Therefore, we recommend that you prefer a minimum size of 960 pixels (widest border) and do not hesitate to go up to 2048 pixels if this does not go against your principles of sharing on the Internet (compared to the risk of unauthorized photo retrieval).
On the other hand, even if very large sizes seem to work better, we believe that for the next photos, it will range from 960 to a maximum of 1200 pixels. Feel free to make your own decision by testing your photos (at the highest JPEG quality) in different dimensions.
A few words about the dimensions accepted by Facebook: even though Facebook recommends only three specific dimensions in its image quality optimization tips — 720, 960, or 2048 pixels (width)—tests show that intermediate values are handled perfectly well by the social network. For albums, make sure you've selected the " High quality " option before starting your uploads.
Things to keep in mind
On the other hand, be careful; there's no point in going beyond 2048 pixels for the widest border of your photo. It even seems counterproductive.
In fact, in my tests, a 3000 x 2000 pixel image is systematically reduced to 2048 x 1365 pixels, but also, after the conversion, the final weight is slightly lower than that obtained directly with a 2048 pixel image.
This difference in weight on the same image therefore implies a greater loss of information if the image processing exceeds the 2048 pixels authorized by Facebook.
In the tests, this difference was slight in a detailed photo and much greater in a simpler one. If the numbers speak for themselves, it must be admitted that visually the difference wasn't obvious. Either way, it's clear that at this point you have absolutely no incentive to send Facebook a photo larger than 2048 pixels.
The compression ratio corresponds to the following calculation:
1 – (Weight after unloading / initial weight)
With this formula, the higher the speed, the greater the compression (and therefore the loss of quality). For information, starting from a JPEG image of the highest quality, this rate was around 85% for a fairly complex image (many details and colour nuances) and around 90% for a simpler image (significant area of a solid colour).
Fortunately, on a photo that is already highly compressed, the rate is lower, but in the end, for the same image, the weight will still be reduced (compared to a compression performed on a quality JPEG) and, on the screen, the difference is visible: this demonstrates the relevance of the advice given in the previous part.
Facebook's "High Quality" option
As previously mentioned, this option is only available in albums and has no impact on Facebook's compression algorithms : even if selected, the image compression will always be the same. This option only affects the maximum dimensions accepted for your photos.
Here is a small table illustrating the impact on the dimensions of uploaded images when the option is not checked:
| Original dimensions (pixels) | Dimensions after downloading the “High quality” option is not checked |
| 960 x 640 | Mismo |
| 1000 x 667 | Mismo |
| 1097 x 731 | Mismo |
| 1098 x 732 | 961 x 641 |
| 1100 x 733 | 963 x 642 |
| 1200 x 800 | 1050 x 700 |
| 2000 x 1333 | 1000 x 667 |
| 2048 x 1365 | 1024 x 683 |
| 3000 x 2000 | 1025 x 750 |
You can see that if the option is not checked, images with the largest side at least equal to 1098 pixels are reduced to smaller dimensions (don't ask me why this limit, I didn't find the logic of this particular number...)
Up to 1097 pixels, photos are not resized (and the weight, therefore the compression rate is strictly identical to that obtained with the option checked), beyond the fact that Facebook recalculates new dimensions with a very particular logic: after resizing the 1200 pixel photo it is larger than the 2000 pixel one (I tried several times with different photos and got the same surprising result).
You should also note a peculiarity: same option unchecked, it seems that the first image imported into the album is not resized (always…) (taking it as the album cover by default, Facebook may consider it better to keep its original size…).
Please note that with the “High Quality” option unchecked, if you submit photos larger than 1100 pixels (approximately), Facebook will reduce them to dimensions closer to 1000 pixels.
Size behavior
Given this strange behavior, the logic of which escapes me, we recommend that you check (as we already indicated the procedure in the first part) the "High quality" option once and for all and do not use it anymore.
- Important point: even if the option «High Quality» is not checked, adding photos directly to your journal (without going through an album) behaves exactly as if the option was checked: therefore, when uploading photos this way, they will not be resized (unless the images exceed 2048 pixels for the widest border).
How to upload photos without losing quality to a Facebook album or newspaper
As a reminder, aside from cover and profile pictures, you have two ways to add photos on Facebook : directly to your journal or to albums.
- Step 1:: Add photos to the newspaper(on your Facebook wall): then you have 2 possible solutions. In your diary (first tab selected under your cover photo), in the central area, click on “Give your opinion» and then on the camera icon.
- Step 2:: Or click on the link «Photo / video» (to the right of «Status») and then to the left on «Import photos/videos«.
- Step 3:: Add photos to an album, click on the link «Photo / video» and then to the right on «Photo Album«.
- Step 4:: In your personal profile, you can also go to the “Photos» just below your cover photo, then select «Album" Y «Create an album«.
To ensure the best quality of images, should we favour photo albums or embedding photos in the newspaper? Is there any difference in the way Facebook handles image uploads?
The tests show that this is not the case: obviously, the processing algorithms used are the same regardless of the method chosen to add your photos.
More precisely, adding the magazine behaves exactly like adding it to an album with the "High quality" option checked (therefore, it is not a problem that this option is only available in albums).
File format: JPEG or PNG?
Several internet articles recommend changing your images to PNG-24 (24 bits or 16.777.216 colors) to maintain the best image quality after uploading them to Facebook: True and False!
- False if we add PNG photos to our personal Facebook profile, true to a certain extent if we include our PNGs on a Facebook page.
Upload photos without losing quality on your personal profile
Here's what we saw in the tests: Facebook converts the PNG to JPEG and the file is subject to the same compression rates as a high-quality JPEG file : the resulting weight is sometimes even a little less with a PNG as the source compared to a JPEG (which would suggest that the quality might be a little worse even if I didn't see any visible difference on the screen).
So for your personal profile, don't bother converting your photos to PNG, there's no point.
Upload photos without losing quality on your professional page
PNG-24 is a lossless image format (image quality is maintained), unlike JPEG. However, even with lossless compression, PNG-24 photos will have a larger file size than JPEG (and therefore, possibly take longer to load online).
Surprisingly, on the professional page, Facebook maintains this PNG format (and therefore the image quality) after download if the original file size is not too high, a priori, if it is less than 1 MB :
- If your PNG file is less than 1 MB, the PNG format will be preserved after import.
- On the contrary, if the PNG file is 1 MB or larger, it will be converted and compressed to JPEG format (be careful, in this case the final file size was often even smaller than that resulting from a more compressed and degraded quality JPEG).
For information, we came to this conclusion because this is what we noticed: the following table shows the most revealing examples.
| original image | Image after importing into Facebook |
| Image 1 – 960 x 640 pixels – 863 KB | Preserved PNG format (865 KB) |
| Image 1 – 1200 x 800 pixels – 1,24 MB | conversion to JPEG format (100 KB) |
| Image 1 – 960 x 640 pixels – 1,06 MB (increased weight with interlaced option) |
conversion to JPEG format (72,3 KB) |
| Image 2 (simplest) – 1200 x 800 pixels – 0,97 MB | PNG format is maintained (1.02 MB) |
| Image 2 – 2000 x 1333 pixels – 2,72 MB | conversion to JPEG format (102 KB) |
For Image 1, Facebook kept the PNG format up to 960 pixels wide, compared to 1200 pixels for the simpler Image 2. On the other hand, the same PNG image with the same dimensions remains PNG when the original file is 0,97 MB, but is converted to JPEG as soon as the initial size exceeds 1 MB.
- NOTE: : in the settings, with PNGs, if the quality and sharpness of the photo are perfectly preserved, we notice a slight deviation in the colors: I did not go into the question in depth but it may be partly related to my wide gamut screen and the often rough management of browsers to manage color spaces well…
Is the quality of the photos different between the Facebook profile and the Facebook page?
The answer was given in the previous section: there are indeed differences in how PNG files are handled . On the other hand, regarding JPEG images , we uploaded the same photos to both the profile and the page, at the album and diary levels, and I didn't see any difference whatsoever . The images had exactly the same characteristics when they were uploaded.
Tips to minimize pixelation when uploading photos without losing quality on Facebook
As you have seen, despite numerous tests, understanding precisely how Facebook treats your photos is not so easy since the combinations are numerous (file format, high quality option, dimensions, compression, diary, album, profile or professional page…).
We're not sure we've figured out all the intricacies of how Facebook works, but here's a rundown of what our testing has taught us, and specific tips for better preparing your images in Lightroom and Photoshop.
General tips for uploading photos without losing quality on Facebook
To keep things simple, we're giving you tips on how to optimize your photos for your personal profile and then, for those who have one, for your professional page.
The quality of Facebook images on your personal profile
- File format: JPEG
- Compression: Minimum; Always choose the highest quality because Facebook will systematically perform compression anyway (as long as it is done on the highest quality image possible).
- Dimensions: Prefer large sizes without exceeding 2048 pixels for the widest border. For the minimum, we recommend 960 pixels. Intermediate values are perfectly well managed.
- Color profile: sRGB
- Facebook “high quality” option: activate it from an album and don’t touch it again.
The quality of Facebook images on your professional page
If you don't want to bother, use the JPEG format and follow the same tips as for adding images to your personal profile (above).
If you want to preserve the quality of your photos as much as possible, you can try the PNG-24 format, but the file size must be less than 1 MB (otherwise, Facebook will convert it into a poor quality JPEG file).
To avoid reaching this file size limit too quickly, be sure to create a compressed PNG-24 (the compression is lossless and therefore doesn't affect image quality) and don't choose too large a size (in my tests, 960 x 640 pixel images were under 1 MB).
For large images or if your PNG photo is larger than 1 MB, switch to JPEG format (choosing the highest quality).
Export your photos for Facebook in Lightroom
You should note that Lightroom 6.5 cannot export a photo to PNG format. Therefore, I give you the export parameters for creating a JPEG file:
File settings
- File format: JPEG
- Color space: sRGB
- Quality: 100 (maximum)
- The “Limit file size” option is not checked.
Image resizing
- Brand "Change the size", choose "Wide edge» in the drop-down window and enter a value in pixels between 960 and 2048 pixels (a smaller value is quite possible, but the image will be slightly less visually pleasing, and a larger value will be reduced to the 2048 pixel value with slightly lower quality compared to an export made directly at 2048 pixels).
- Litigation, Arbitration: what makes you happy.
Output sharpness
We didn't really notice if Facebook was using any sharpening, even though we had read online that it would… On the other hand, we tended to choose " Sharpness for: Screen " with a " Standard " or " High " gain. (Depending on the image and any processing already done).
Saving an Image for Facebook Using Photoshop
With Photoshop, you can also create a PNG file. In Photoshop CS6 (we think it's pretty comparable in other versions of Photoshop) you have 2 possible methods to create your JPEG or PNG files.
Creating a JPEG file
As you may have understood, the idea is to create the JPEG file with the dimensions you want but above all to make sure that it has the highest quality.
- «File – Save As» menu: after you have resized your photo using the « menuImage - Image size«, choose the format «JPEG«, Click the« buttonSave«. In the dialog box «JPEG options«, choose 12 for maximum quality and format «Basic (standard)«.
- “File – Save for Web” menu: choose JPEG, Maximum (quality 100). Uncheck the “Progressive" Y "Optimized«. On the other hand you can mark “Incorporate the color profile” (although I don't know if Facebook takes this into account or not during its processing) and “Convert to sRGB” to make sure that the color space of the image is good in favor of the internet. And unlike the first method where you had to go through another menu to change the dimensions of your photo, here you can do it directly in the section called “Image size«. Then click on «Keep…» and give the image a name.
Create a PNG-24 file
- «File – Save As» menu: choose the format «PNG«, Click the« buttonSave«. In the following dialog box «PNG Options«, Select«Smaller / Slower» for Compression and «No» for Interlaced. These two options will limit the file size and therefore increase the chances of Facebook supporting it (without conversion to JPEG).
- “File – Save for Web” menu: choose PNG-24 and uncheck «Interlaced» (always to reduce the file size). The advantage of this method is that you can visualize, even before saving, the weight that the file will have and therefore choose its dimensions (image size) so that they are compatible with a weight of less than 1 MB.
You might also be interested in reading about: How to Transfer Followers from One Facebook Page to Another
WARNING : We'd like to remind you that Facebook isn't the best place to display your photos if you absolutely want to avoid any visible degradation. The tips presented in this article aim to limit image quality loss, but you should keep in mind that with Facebook, your images will almost always be compressed, resulting in some degree of image degradation . Even the "High Quality" option in albums won't change anything. In any case, this is the situation at the time of writing.
Conclusion
If you are an artist who does not accept that your images degrade, instead turn to platforms dedicated to photography or look for other hosting solutions by putting a simple link to your images on Facebook… on the other hand, it is likely that your publications will be less visible (less highlighted by Facebook) than if you had chosen to upload your photos directly to the social network's servers. On the other hand, you can also use the alternatives to upload photos without losing quality to Facebook. We hope we have helped you with this information.
My name is Javier Chirinos and I am passionate about technology. Ever since I can remember, I have been interested in computers and video games, and that passion has turned into a job.
I have been publishing about technology and gadgets on the Internet for over 15 years, especially in mundobytes.com
I am also an expert in online marketing and communication and have knowledge in WordPress development.