Are your WhatsApp photos appearing blurry? Then try and turn on the chat app's hidden HD setting. — Photo: Zacharie Scheurer/dpa
BERLIN: Photos never look quite as good once you send them on WhatsApp. That's because the chat app drastically compresses the file size to make photos faster to send and receive.
And yet this means many details can get lost in the blur once you zoom in – particularly in group photos.
What most people don't know is that WhatsApp also lets you send photos in HD.
To activate this feature, all you have to do is go to:
- Settings >
- Storage and data >
- Media upload quality.
There you'll be able to switch to HD quality for both photos and videos. On the next snap you send, you'll notice a small HD logo on the image.
The quality of the transferred images is now significantly higher, and yet the photos are still compressed before being sent in order to reduce the amount of data that needs to be sent.
While the quality difference is immediately noticeable, HD is still a bit of an exaggeration for anyone who is thinking of printing photos from WhatsApp.
In our experience, HD photos are reduced to around 500-600kB (kilobytes), or roughly twice the size of standard photos sent, but WhatsApp says HD photos can be up to six times larger than standard photos.
HD photos are, however, still significantly lower in quality than the originals, which tend have file sizes upwards of 10mb (megabytes) on modern smartphones.
If you want to send photos for printing or editing in Photoshop, then other messengers like Threema and Telegram will let you send them in their original quality. If you don't want to install another app, it's better to send them in their original resolution by email. – dpa
