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Do I just 2x the size of the file while maintaining it's ratio? Like lets say I want to upload a high res image to instagram? What do I have to do to maintain a very high res image?

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    You can't upload high res images. Commented May 6, 2021 at 16:37
  • Hi. Welcome to GDSE. If you want to share high resolution images, I'd recommend you don't use Instagram or other social media sites. These services always resample and compress large high res images (reduce the number of pixels) so that they download quicker over mobile internet connections. Find a file sharing site instead.
    – Billy Kerr
    Commented May 6, 2021 at 17:22
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    Be aware, practically anywhere you upload an image.. there's server side scripting to process the image. Often this means the image may be resized, compression changed, etc. What you see after the upload is almost never the same image you upload.
    – Scott
    Commented May 6, 2021 at 17:49
  • @Scott I think on Slack you can share files without any changes in original file.
    – Vikas
    Commented May 6, 2021 at 20:32
  • operative word... "practically" -- I didn't post everywhere :)
    – Scott
    Commented May 6, 2021 at 20:48

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Social media sites use their own rules how they mangle photos. They need to try to keep the storage costs low enough to maximize their profits.

You must be somehow important to the media company (for. ex. the biggest owner) to force them behave as you want. Social media companies do not care of ordinary punters, they are only the food - the special one which imagines he is eating.

But you can optimize your images so that their automation causes the least amount of damage (=have certain pixel dimensions, but do exceed them, have certain aspect ratio, have more contrast than needed at your own PC, do not compress it to low quality before uploading) Search for guides. Here's one:

https://www.softwarehow.com/upload-quality-photos-instagram/

and here's another:

https://willgoodlet.com/blog/optimising-facebook-images

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  • It'd be good to include the relevant parts of the links inside of your answer instead of just linking to them in case the third party sites go down. Commented May 6, 2021 at 18:17
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    The essentials are in the answer. The companies probably change the critical numbers often when they see some storage maximization strategy has become too widely used.
    – user82991
    Commented May 6, 2021 at 18:24
  • Is this also a reason Facebook don't allow text formatting?
    – Vikas
    Commented May 6, 2021 at 20:33
  • The customers of the Facebook (not you nor other users, but those who pay to Facebook for collecting data and showing "the right" content) probably have not shown enough willingness to pay for getting to know what fonts different pieces of the food prefer.
    – user82991
    Commented May 6, 2021 at 21:42

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