We live in a world where almost everyone has endless access to a phone camera, and photos are constantly being taken and shared via social media like Whatsapp Messenger for printing. Of course, pictures remain as important as ever but we need to make sure we’re not only taking them, but also sharing them right. WhatsApp is notorious for compressing its images, so that otherwise-beautiful pictures look like they were shot from a generations-old camera phone. I might have exaggerated but only slightly.
Are we doing pictures right?
Let’s talk about sharing photos for printing, to help exemplify that point I will tell you more about the commonest format photos are shared in, JPEG or JPG. JPEG/JPG is a digital file extension. There are actually no differences between the JPG and JPEG formats. The only difference is the number of characters used. JPG only exists because in earlier versions of Windows (MS-DOS 8.3 and FAT-16 file systems) they required a three letter extension for the file names. So .jpeg
was shortened to .jpg
. These both stand for an image format proposed and supported by the Joint Photographic Experts Group. Unfortunately files with any of these extensions lose quality on repeated editing and sharing on platforms such as whatsapp.
Luckily there’s an easy way to send high quality photos on WhatsApp especially for printing.
Steps to Send Photos in WhatsApp without Losing Quality
Once you have saved the image on your phone,
- Open WhatsApp and go to the conversation where you want to share the image without loss of quality.
- Select the paperclip icon.
- Select Document
- Browse to folders on your phone where the photos are located
5. Navigate to the folders
6. select the photos by long holding your particular photos
7. Tap on “OPEN” so that the photos you want open in your whatsapp conversation
8. It will prompt you to send to the box for sending
EDITOR’S CHOICE
- WHY YOUR PHOTOS DESERVE A PRINT OR FRAME
- WHY YOU NEED TO PRESERVE YOUR MEMORIES IN A PHOTOBOOK
- MOBILE PHONE PHOTOGRAPHY: 25 LESSONS LEARNT
That is it! With this, the other person will receive the image without loss of quality and without any compression. A direct preview of the image in the conversation will not appear, but it will appear as a sent document. Opening the document, we will view the image and will be able to keep it in Photos. Keep in mind that this also means a significant increase in the storage of WhatsApp backup, so it should be done only with the really important images. If you want this to not happen, delete the image of your conversation after sending it.
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