{"id":449554,"date":"2022-06-20T18:24:24","date_gmt":"2022-06-20T16:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=449554"},"modified":"2022-06-20T18:30:05","modified_gmt":"2022-06-20T16:30:05","slug":"avoid-losing-whatsapp-image-quality-with-this-trick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/smartphones\/449554-avoid-losing-whatsapp-image-quality-with-this-trick.html","title":{"rendered":"Avoid losing WhatsApp image quality with this trick"},"content":{"rendered":"

MyBroadband tested sending media files as documents on WhatsApp and found it significantly impacted image quality, especially on higher resolution images.<\/p>\n

When sending an image or video over WhatsApp, the file is scaled to a lower resolution to save on data, which reduces the quality of the received image.<\/p>\n

While this is fine for casual image sharing, problems arise if you want to send a higher resolution image or video to someone for professional use.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, WhatsApp lets you send images and videos as documents, bypassing its compression mechanism and ensuring the quality does not suffer.<\/p>\n

MyBroadband tested this by sending six images and a video clip using WhatsApp’s media sharing option and then sending the same files as documents.<\/p>\n

These files were downloaded on the same device side, and the resolution, file size and quality were compared.<\/p>\n

The images were originally either 8160\u00d76120 or 4000\u00d73000, and all ended up as 1600\u00d71200 when shared as pictures in a WhatsApp chat.<\/p>\n

They all kept their original resolutions when sent as documents.<\/p>\n

The video initially had a resolution of 1920\u00d71080 and a framerate of 30 frames per second.<\/p>\n

While the framerate remained the same, the one sent as media ended up with a resolution of only 640\u00d7352.<\/p>\n

The images we sent the usual way ended up with file sizes less than 10% of the original, while the video shrunk to 14% of its original size.<\/p>\n

This makes for a significant data saving, which explains why this is the default method to send images and videos.<\/p>\n

\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
WhatsApp Image Compression<\/strong><\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Test file<\/strong><\/th>\nOriginal Resolution<\/strong><\/th>\nOriginal Size<\/strong><\/th>\nWhatsApp Resolution<\/strong><\/th>\nWhatsApp Size<\/strong><\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Image 1<\/td>\n8160\u00d76120<\/td>\n6.74 MB<\/td>\n1600\u00d71200<\/td>\n142 KB<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Image 2<\/td>\n8160\u00d76120<\/td>\n4.99 MB<\/td>\n1600\u00d71200<\/td>\n126 KB<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Image 3<\/td>\n8160\u00d76120<\/td>\n8.18 MB<\/td>\n1600\u00d71200<\/td>\n221 KB<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Image 4<\/td>\n3000\u00d74000<\/td>\n1.48 MB<\/td>\n1200\u00d71600<\/td>\n128 KB<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Image 5<\/td>\n3000\u00d74000<\/td>\n1.99 MB<\/td>\n1200\u00d71600<\/td>\n84.7 KB<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Image 6<\/td>\n4000\u00d73000<\/td>\n2.68 MB<\/td>\n1600\u00d71200<\/td>\n202 KB<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Video 1<\/td>\n1920\u00d71080<\/td>\n7.21 MB<\/td>\n640\u00d7352<\/td>\n1.01 MB<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

When comparing the resulting image quality of the two methods, we looked at small, detailed parts of each image.<\/p>\n

It was immediately apparent that WhatsApp’s image compression is very lossy to achieve the high data savings we measured.<\/p>\n

As expected, the quality reduction was more evident in images with a higher starting resolution.<\/p>\n

The reduction in the video quality was worse than the image compression, with even the colours looking different from the original.<\/p>\n

We also tried going into WhatsApp’s Storage and Data settings and changing the upload quality to the “best” option instead of “auto”, but this made no difference to the results.<\/p>\n

While sending images and videos as documents is not recommended for day-to-day sharing due to the data use, it is a handy trick to remember when you need a photo or video in all its original glory.<\/p>\n

Zoomed portions from some images and a frame from the video are included below to show the quality differences.<\/p>\n

WhatsApp image quality tests<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Image 1: WhatsApp image quality test \u2014 Sent as Document (Left) vs Image (Right) [Click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>

\"\"<\/a>

Image 2: WhatsApp image quality test \u2014 Sent as Document (Left) vs Image (Right) [Click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>

\"\"<\/a>

Image 3: WhatsApp image quality test \u2014 Sent as Document (Left) vs Image (Right) [Click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>

\"\"<\/a>

Image 5: WhatsApp image quality test \u2014 Sent as Document (Left) vs Image (Right) [Click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

WhatsApp video quality test<\/h3>\n
\"\"<\/a>

WhatsApp video quality test \u2014 Sent as Document (Left) vs Image (Right) [Click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

Now read:\u00a0Threatening WhatsApp message gets worker fired in South Africa<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MyBroadband tested different methods for sending images over WhatsApp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341074,"featured_media":416980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17934],"tags":[161,35,73842,2594],"class_list":["post-449554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-smartphones","tag-facebook","tag-headline","tag-meta-platforms","tag-whatsapp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449554"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449554"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":449558,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449554\/revisions\/449558"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}