Facebook Messenger Now Supports 4K Images

Facebook Messenger Now Supports 4K Images

Facebook Messenger was initially forced on us as a separate app to mild resistance. Eventually, the dichotomy of the platform was accepted and now Messenger is one of the most used communication applications there is.

One area of frustration in Messenger (and for me, much of Facebook in general) is the compression and limitations of images. Sending photos via the app had a limitation of 2K which in turn limited Messenger's usefulness as a tool for sharing. Today, Messenger is rolling out an update which changes the limitation to 4,096 x 4,096 (4K) which is the highest quality most smartphones can cater for.

Frankly, this change — while welcomed — is long overdue. In the press release for this update, Product Managers Sean Kelly and Hagen Green noted that more than 17 billion photos are sent through Messenger every month. As photographers, we're fully aware of the merits of high resolution, and while Messenger still won't be able to support DSLR native resolutions, it's a step in the right direction for image sharing and previews.

Starting today, once you have updated the Messenger app on your iPhone or Android phones, people in the US, Canada, France, Australia, the UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea will be able to send and receive 4K photos, with the update being rolled out in other countries over the coming weeks.

Will this affect how you use the app? How do you find Facebook and Messenger handle a photographer's needs?

Rob Baggs's picture

Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

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4 Comments

Photos still look like shit on my page.

they should take care of their over compressed jpg first

Ummm ok

Well, makes no difference to me. 4K or not, the Messenger is still... messy. I just realized I made an accidental pun. But anyway, they should focus on making contact lists easier to handle and open for sharing and remove the irritating interface elements. 4K image sharing is very low on the list of actual priorities.
https://droidinformer.org/Stories/facebook-messenger-can-now-handle-imag...
But I guess this is facebook for you. Always making the most random decision.