Facebook image sizes

[Codebreaker]

Every so often I get sent image files from friends who ask me to print them out or make collages or books. Nearly always they've got them from Facebook and the resolution is so small that you could just about print a postage stamp. It looks like they just grabbed a thumbnail. They just can't seem to graps the idea that what they see on their phone can't be printed out or used with any reasonable quality.

I'm not a Facebook user so I'm wondering if anyone knows if you can post larger file size photos to FB. I've searched around and most articles are concerned with sizes of profile pictures.

I usually recommend to them to get the original files shared via Google Drive or similar but this seems an alien concept to most of them as well.

Thanks

[Pippan]

You can post photos up to 2048px x 2048px on Facebook, but probably many are much smaller.

cheers

[Manfred M]

I suspect it is a combination of phone and Facebook issue.

When I post an image straight to Facebook from my phone, the image tends to be quite small. When I download the image to my computer from my phone and upload it to Facebook from there, the image on Facebook is somewhat larger and I could probably pull a small print 5" x 7" / 13 cm x 17cm from it. Given the small sensor size, I'd hate to see what the end product looks like at even those sizes.

The same image uploaded to Facebook from the computer is 2000 pixels x 1500 pixels, but a direct upload from my Galaxy S10+ is only 714 x 960 pixels. Neither my phone nor Facebook seem to have any quality parameters where I can control the quality of the image.

Given the lack of technical proficiency on your friends part, a blanket statement that phone images are too small to print and are only meant to be viewed on a computer screen with its relatively low resolution might be the best approach, unless they are willing to let you download the images directly from their phone to your computer.

[pschlute]

As I recently discovered FB also either strips or replaces the colour profile tag. Of all the websites, FB would be the last one I would use to download and print from.

[LovelyAnguris]

If you can share high quality images that will use for download. Eventhough it is small in size after download you can resize the image with resize tools with out losing quality.

[Manfred M]

If you can share high quality images that will use for download. Eventhough it is small in size after download you can resize the image with resize tools with out losing quality.

Carefully said, in my experience, this does not appear to be correct, but the results may vary depending on your photo editing software.

I owned OneOn Perfect Resize (the earlier versions of Photoshop (before CS4) had relatively weak resizing algorithms, so as a print maker I needed this type of tool. I have tested it and the latest Topaz Gigapixel product and have found that there is no noticeable difference between the results of what recent Photoshop versions do with their own algorithms. The results may be better (or worse) with other raster editing products. Others I know that have tested these products have told me that they have reached the same conclusion that I have.

What all these products attempt to do is use a more sophisticated approach when upsampling rather than simple interpolation to create new data. Perfect Resize claims that they use a fractal based method and Topaz suggest that they use machine learning. Regardless of the technology used, they are creating new pixels, so suggesting that there is no data loss is simply not correct.

[pschlute]

If you can share high quality images that will use for download. Eventhough it is small in size after download you can resize the image with resize tools with out losing quality.

Always better to download a larger image, and preferably one that has it's original colour profile tag intact. The latter is the main reason why I suggest FB is a bad choice

[Codebreaker]

Thanks for your replies.

Based upon what was Pippan wrote about image sizes I thought that there could also be an issue with the way images are sent to FB and this seems to be what Manfred has confirmed.

Her project has been put on hold since the moment past and I'm sure that when resurected around the end of year as she thinks, I'll still be trying to explain the same issues.

Thanks everyone