Why Facebook Makes Your Images Look Shitty and How to Fix It
If you are using Facebook, you probably uploaded an image at some point. While Facebook is great for sharing, it also uses a pretty ruthless compression (at least compared to other sites) that makes your photos look like crap. Here’s how to avoid it.
How Facebook spoils your images
Facebook is huge. An estimated 350 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day. They need to store a lot of data, so Facebook compresses your images to lighten the load. This makes them smaller in size, but can also spoil the image quality. This is usually nothing special, but when an image is streamed over the internet, downloaded, shared, and re-uploaded to a bunch of different services, it can get pretty frustrating.
For example, let’s take a look at this screenshot of Strong Bad email. To get an idea of how bad image compression can be, I uploaded a screenshot, uploaded the resulting file, and then re-uploaded the already compressed version. Here’s what we got after loading five times:
As you can see, it doesn’t take long for the image to start looking crappy. Strong Bad’s entire head looks stone, and the ketchup on his computer is even dirtier than it used to be. In my testing, I found that this was roughly the threshold at which Facebook’s compression didn’t matter much.
You can also see how this compression affects the text. In the image below, you can see that any area around the text starts to get blocky, noisy and faded:
Of course, the problem is compounded when the already shabby image is removed from Facebook, slightly modified and re-uploaded to go through the whole process again. This happens all the time on the Internet. Person A said something funny on Twitter. Person B takes a screenshot and uploads it to Facebook. Person C then uploads that image, shares it on Tumblr, and adds a comment. Person D takes a new screenshot of the image, including the comment, and sends it via Facebook Messenger to Person E, who then saves the image and uploads it to his Facebook timeline. At this point, it has been compressed three times on Facebook, and a screenshot has been added to it. Most likely it will look like crap.
Of course, Facebook isn’t the only site that compresses images. Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and just about any other site that you can upload images to will apply some level of compression. However, Facebook’s squeeze seems to be more ruthless than most sites. And once the image is compressed to the level of Facebook, it may be too small to cause compression on another site. However, things like Instagram filters or screenshots can enlarge the image, including old flaws, introduce new ones, and start the process over.
When everyone does this every time they want to move a picture from one place to another, pictures can very quickly start to look like garbage. When you upload your own photos, they may look fine the first time, but the more the image spreads on the Internet, the more its quality deteriorates.
What can you do about it
Unfortunately, you cannot turn off Facebook compression. However, there are several ways to minimize the effect. In some cases, you can customize your photos before uploading them to Facebook. You can also use a separate hosting for sharing photos without even touching the Facebook servers.
Learn How to Use Facebook’s Native Tools
While Facebook always applies compression to uploaded photos, there are several ways to limit this effect. Here are some key tips if you choose to upload files to Facebook directly:
- Upload images that are at least 2048 pixels wide: According to Facebook guidelines, 2048 pixels are ideal for high-resolution images. Your images will still be compressed, but if you upload them at a higher resolution, the effect may not be as noticeable. Best used for photographs.
- Create “high quality” albums on upload: Facebook has a high quality option, but it’s buried. To enable it, create a new photo album. When creating an album, select the High Quality check box. Now any photos uploaded to this album will be stored in larger files with smaller compressed file sizes.
- Crop covers to 851 pixels by 315 pixels: Also in line with Facebook’s own guidelines, ideally covers should be 851 pixels by 315 pixels. Anything less than this will make your cover photo look stretched and uneven.
You can’t completely rule out Facebook compression, but if you’re in no rush to upload your own photos, you can get the best out of them too.
Share the best version of a photo you can
Not all photos you share will be photos you edit yourself. Sometimes you just want to share something funny or interesting you found on the Internet. If you’re going to do this, do yourself (and everyone else) a favor and share the best version you can. There are several ways to do this:
- Share Direct Links: If you find an image elsewhere on the internet, share a link to the image itself, rather than uploading it to your page. Not only is this faster and easier, but it will probably be better in quality, and in most cases Facebook will embed the image at full size anyway. You can quickly get a link to just about any photo on the web by right-clicking it and choosing Copy Image URL.
- Use an alternative hosting: If you want to share a photo you took yourself without compressing it, you can upload it to a third-party hosting site like Imgur . Imgur uses lossless compression for any photo less than 5MB in size . When you share a link to this photo, Facebook will embed a higher resolution version.
- Search Google for the best version: If you come across a version of an image on Facebook that already looks like hell-compressed, try searching the images on Google to see if you can find a less crappy version. You can either provide a link to it, or at least download one that hasn’t been compressed as much.
- Use the Share button: If you find a photo on Facebook and it has a Share button, use that instead of re-uploading the photo. He will share the version already uploaded by Facebook. Even if it has already been compressed a little, you can at least not compress it even more.
As long as you upload photos to Facebook, you will always get at least a little compression. Not everything needs to be uploaded to Facebook, however, and even when they do, it’s usually pretty easy to find a better version of an image elsewhere.
Avoid bad habits that spoil pictures
There are some habits that, while technically possible, should not be encouraged (such asvertical videos ). Similarly, there are some things to avoid when posting photos to Facebook to prevent ugly compressed images from appearing:
- Do not upload or download from Facebook: If the image is already on Facebook, try not to upload and then re-upload it to Facebook. Once may be good, but everyone who does it over and over is like a phone game with pictures. Except that instead of a funny misinterpreted message at the end, you just end up with a distorted, rough picture. Instead, upload the original or share an existing one using the Share button.
- Don’t share photos by taking screenshots on your phone: If the thing you’re sharing wasn’t created on your phone, it probably isn’t worth sharing by taking a screenshot and posting the screenshot to Facebook. Not only does it shrink, but it looks sticky.
- Don’t take screenshots of high-res, low-res images: Taking screenshots on your computer can be a handy way to share an image. If you are going to do this, at least try to get the highest quality possible. If you are taking a screenshot of text, zoom in a little. If you are capturing a still from a video, switch to the highest quality setting first. Remember, the more the better.
For the most part, this will significantly affect the quality of the images you share. However, some of these tips are also small courtesies that can make the Internet less cheesy for everyone. Of course, uploading and re-uploading to Facebook once might not hurt, but if no one else did, there would be fewer photos in our feeds that look like this .