We’ve all heard photographers complaining about Facebook killing the quality of their photos. I have good news: this is a total myth

Almost all photographers from beginner to professional use Facebook to share images. We’ve all heard photographers complaining about the dreadful quality of their images and feel that their best masterpieces are not getting the number of pixels they deserves to be shown in all their glory.

In this article I will explain why this is totally untrue, where this myth comes from and how to maximise the quality of your photos for Facebook.

Let’s be logical about it…

Facebook is the biggest and most successful social networking platform on the planet. It is also the most widely used platform for sharing professional photos, which s is good news for Mr Zuckerberg and Co. as it means a limitless supply of high quality content.

The last thing they would want to do is to make these images soft, compressed or pixelated as this would harm the perceived quality of the whole platform, reduce advert revenue and everything else.

So on that basis alone, Facebook affecting images negatively in any substantive way would clearly be crazy.

How DO they store images then?

Facebook is, fundamentally, a huge database with countless posts, images, videos all being added by billions of people every day. All this content needs to be retrieved immediately, so the images are not stored in a big folder at Facebook HQ as we would do on our machines, but instead they are inserted into a database for instant access.

Facebook probably doesn’t even store images as JPEGs given that this technology is 20 years old and more modern algorithms do a much better job. So why does JPEG hang around? Because everyone uses it, simple as that. But if you don’t need to worry about compatibility (like an internal Facebook database) then you can use whatever technology you want.

In fact, the only time Facebook will even use JPEG is when you ‘download’ an image from Facebook. Then all that happens is the internal (clever) format is converted into a .jpeg image file that you can use.

Have you noticed that the filename of a downloaded file is nothing like the filename you uploaded. That’s because it’s not the file uploaded - it’s been generated ‘on the fly’!

This is important: there is no magic resolution or quality setting that will mean your images are not touched. They are getting manipulated, processed, resized and compressed every time. BUT - what you get out will be virtually the same quality as the image you put in. If it looks pixelated, then that’s what you uploaded. Every time. Sorry about that.

How are the images manipulated at Facebook HQ?

So let's look at what happens to your images when you upload them.

Firstly, for those at the back, some definitions:

• Re-size. Change the resolution by making the image smaller or bigger in pixel size. We generally make images smaller for electronic use because you do not need the full size. But even as a digital image, if the size is reduced too much you can see pixels in the image. It’s not usually a good idea to increase image size as you do not gain anything - you can’t create image detail which does not exist.

• Compress. Use an algorithm, like JPEG, to reduce not the size but the amount of data the image takes up in bytes. This saves storage space and makes images load quickly, but can produce unwanted artefacts when done to the extreme

Good Enough

Facebook WILL resize AND compress your images. A lot. But the boffins in San José write the algorithms so the the images are still ‘Good Enough’.

What does this mean. exactly? Well, there is no strict definition, but it means that the image is acceptably similar in quality to the original, when viewed at the resolution Facebook will deliver the image at. So, in summary, in a Facebook post, it will look about the same as the original. ‘Good Enough’ does not mean ‘identical’ it means that for most purposes, they are the same. An MP3 only contains about 10% of the original track, which is why they are so small - but to every person using Apple Music or other Streaming service they are the ‘Good Enough’.

Good Enough: Image Size

Facebook displays images at a maximum of around 2000 pixels .Therefore, the image can be reduced to about 2000 pixels wide, and still look identical to the original. In this case, 2000px is ‘good enough’ as larger images will simply take up more space in the database and take longer to load with no additional benefit.

Multiple Versions: Facebook will actually create multiple versions of your image (similar to website platforms like Squarespace) so that it can serve the version that’s ‘good enough’ for each device. If you are on a lower-resolution smartphone then you receive smaller images than you do on a Retina display. Another reason the low-quality version might be sent to your device is because you are on a slow internet connection. If that slow connection is really impacting your use of the service, Facebook may send you images that are quicker to load, then resort back to better ones when things improve (a bit like YouTube does).

Good Enough: Image compression:

As anyone that has optimised their site for SEO will know, you can reduce the amount of data that an image takes up to a fraction of the original size, and it still looks pretty much the same. Reducing the amount of data means the image loads more quickly giving a better user-experience (and Google ranking).

JPEG has a compression amount built right into the algorithm. You are using it if you change the Image Quality when you export from your image editing app.

Facebook will compress the images hard when you upload to minimise storage space and delivery speed, but again the quality will still be ‘Good Enough’.

By combining these two techniques, Facebook will probably be using up less than 1% of the data that a full size JPEG needs and it looks the same on our devices. Pretty clever really. 

Ok smartass, why DO my images look bad on Facebook?

In ALL cases where I have investigated claims around this, one of these things is happening. Every time it was because:

1. The image was viewed a second or two after upload. Remember above I mentioned that various versions of the image are created for different devices. This is a common trick in the image and video world (YouTube SD videos are ready a minute or so before the HD equivalents). The lower resolution ones will be ready first and so if you look right away before the others have been generated, then you will see the version that is NOT ‘good enough’. Wait 10 seconds and it will be fine.

2. You saved the image on a lower res device. This is linked to the above point. If you view your image on a smaller screen device and save the JPEG, then of course you will be looking at a lower quality version than if you’d done the same thing on your MacBook.

3. You are zooming-in and seeing pixelated areas. Yes, if you download and inspect (or pinch and zoom) the image, it will be lower quality. But this is not a fair test as you will not seen this degraded detail in normal viewing. The algorithm is tuned to only degrades the things you can’t see.

4. The original image size or quality. If you provide an image that’s small in pixels or data then Facebook can not really be blamed for it looking bad.

5. The image is being viewed on a lower resolution device, or on a slow internet connection. Both these circumstances mean that the image that Facebook sends you might be one of the lower quality versions. I have never seen this personally, but it seems likely that this could happen (thanks Andrew Hellmich for the input here)

How to upload images to be viewed perfectly on Facebook:

• Resolution: As long as it’s over a certain size, this does not matter. There is no magic size that will not get processed. However, if it’s smaller than 2048 then your image may be upsized by Facebook which can cause loss of sharpness. Upload at 2048 or larger, even full size is fine.

• Quality: Leave quality high. This ensures the JPEG that goes into the Facebook processing machine is as good as it can be. Compressing an image twice is usually not a good idea, unless you are using something like JpegMini that is designed to do just that.

This will give you perfectly good quality in all normal posting circumstances and will fix any of the problems you may have had. Guaranteed.

Upload in HD?

I include this section for completeness - thanks to reader Chris Snow for this one.

There is a way to get even better quality versions uploaded to Facebook. In the Facebook App for iPhone, head to Settings->Video and Photos and there you can allow an HD version of your photo to be uploaded.

This comes with some caveats: firstly remember that all complaints around Facebook Image Quality can be resolved without this setting, so if you are having problems now, this will not fix them. The other caveat here is that there is no concrete data from Facebook about how this is used or how it affects users viewing your photos. I leave it off.

Update: Test Results

The initial release of this article created some really interesting discussion, and it became hard to back up the message that this article delivers without some tests.

The reason I previously did not provide tests is that creating a meaningful test is surprisingly difficult and this is no exception. If the test raises debate and questions then it is not a valuable test, so I have tried hard to make it useful.

Test Design

I have designed a test that uses screenshots of an image at various stages of the process. The screenshot resolution is 2040px wide as that is the size that Facebook displays my image on my BenQ 32” display. The reason I have used screenshots, not the actual images is because we want to guarantee a fair test. We have to test what is visible to our eyes, and a screenshot is the closest we can get. If we use the source images, then we are not creating a fair test, we would just be proving that higher resolution images are better quality, which is obvious

Test Process

1. Export 6016px and 2048px versions of the same image from Lightroom, at 90% Quality. These will be our source images

2. Upload both to Facebook in the same post and view them

3. Take a screenshot of each image as displayed by Facebook (2040px)

4. Go back to our source images and display them both at the same resolution as Facebook uses 2040px.

5. Take a screenshot of the source images at this display resolution.

So this is now a fair test.

• From steps 3 we have the source images, displayed at the same size as Facebook. These are the images that people are saying are ‘better’ than Facebook’s versions of them.

• From step 5 we have those two images, uploaded to Facebook, re-presented and screenshots taken again. These are the images that people are saying are ‘terrible’ due to Facebook’s processing.

This article made the hypothesis that Facebook does NOT significantly reduce the quality of the images and that the Facebook versions would be ‘Good Enough’ compared to the originals. You decide:

Results Analysis

Of course the problem with a subjective test like this is that there is no right or wrong answer. My viewing of these images backs up everything above:

• That Facebook does reduce the quality and resolution, BUT that this reduction in visible quality is very small.

• That resolution does not matter as long as it’s over 2048px wide

Yes we can see a difference between the original and the Facebook, version, but only when viewing one after the other. You have to ask yourself: are the images on the right acceptable quality for the purpose that they are being used for, assuming that’s all the viewer sees? Absolutely, and therefore I say these are ‘good enough’.

Above all, whichever way you view the results , what is 100% proven by this test is that if your images are blurry, pixelated with incorrect colours on Facebook, then you are doing something wrong.

A word on compression tools…

They are not all the same:

• JPEG: Built into most of our workflows. General-purpose, gives good results in normal-high quality, but poor images result when pushed too hard.

• TinyPNG: Online tool. This tool and those like it are brilliant for reducing the size of images for your website. It is an aggressive algorithm but does a MUCH better job than JPEG alone. You put in a JPEG (or PNG) and it will take it down to a fifth or a tenth of the size while still looking perfectly acceptable for a website. You wouldn't want to ship them like this to a client, but that’s not what this tool is about. It’s all about creating a fast website, which is a key factor in improved SEO.

• JpegMini: Brilliant tool for all of your workflow. Jpeg Mini has a clever algorithm that can take a JPEG and take it to about half the original size. The benefit here is that it will be totally indistinguishable from the original, so it’s great even before sending images for printing. I use this on every image I export from Lightroom for the web, for print or for clients. Total no-brainer.

But remember, whichever tool you use, NEVER re-edit the image afterwards. Always go back to the original. If you’re not sure why that is, let me know and I’ll write another post!

Conclusion

Facebook is NOT screwing with your images, it does clever things with them to make them small and fast to load, but they will not be significantly reduced in quality. They’re changed a bit yes, but not to the point that people will notice. To keep to your side of the bargain, export at something larger than 2048px wide, and at a high JPEG quality.

That’s it. If you do this you will never blame Facebook again. I promise:-)

About Nick Church

Nick Church is a wedding photographer and educator based in Bristol, UK. Nick started photography in 2015 and just three years later was able to leave his exec role in the tech sector to run Nick Church Photography full time.

Using the strategies and techniques he used to grow his business, Nick now provides photography and business workshops enabling aspiring amateur and professional photographers to reach their business goals.

View our programme of workshops here. Many courses are being run remotely at 50% off during the COVID-19 crisis. Details here

Before moving running software businesses I designed and implemented the latest image and video compression algorithms for which I have a number of patented inventions. Later, I ran a software company that created a big-data databased platform. The views in this article is not knowledge of Facebook’s processes, but of general expertise in the field and what I would do if I designed Facebook.

Article by Nick Church
Additional editing by Lewis Hyden