Does iMessage not compress photos?

[Siderz]

I took a picture of my friend from my iPhone 5s and sent it to her, out of the blue I decided to see if it compresses, so I used iMessage on my iMac and just dragged the photo to the desktop to see the size, noticed it was 2MB! Then I saved the image from my iPhone messages to the camera roll and transferred it to my iMac, and it was still 2MB!

That's ridiculous! And you can't see how much storage iMessage is using on iCloud so no wonder I'm using so much.

There needs to be an option to send photos as compressed or uncompressed, or always compressed and a method of sending as uncompressed would be AirDrop. Apps like Telegram compress them by quite a bit, that 2MB photo will be made smaller and compressed to probably a size of <200KB. You can send them as uncompressed as well by clicking "Document".

I feel there is very little need to send pictures as uncompressed, or if they are being compressed, to send them at sizes as big as 2MB, what is the receiver going to do with them? Print them? Probably not. Probably going to upload them to Facebook...which is just going to compress them anyway.

 

[pmontanarella]

I took a picture of my friend from my iPhone 5s and sent it to her, out of the blue I decided to see if it compresses, so I used iMessage on my iMac and just dragged the photo to the desktop to see the size, noticed it was 2MB! Then I saved the image from my iPhone messages to the camera roll and transferred it to my iMac, and it was still 2MB!

That's ridiculous! And you can't see how much storage iMessage is using on iCloud so no wonder I'm using so much.

There needs to be an option to send photos as compressed or uncompressed, or always compressed and a method of sending as uncompressed would be AirDrop. Apps like Telegram compress them by quite a bit, that 2MB photo will be made smaller and compressed to probably a size of <200KB. You can send them as uncompressed as well by clicking "Document".

I feel there is very little need to send pictures as uncompressed, or if they are being compressed, to send them at sizes as big as 2MB, what is the receiver going to do with them? Print them? Probably not. Probably going to upload them to Facebook...which is just going to compress them anyway.

Would definitely also help speed up the process of sending media through iMessage which I've noticed is often painstakingly slow!

 

[Siderz]

Would definitely also help speed up the process of sending media through iMessage which I've noticed is often painstakingly slow!

Exactly! And let's not forgot the data usage if you're on mobile data.

 

[Siderz]

I just sent a 12 second video to my friend then checked how big it is.

1080p, 25MB!!! What the hell!! Telegram compressed this down to 5MB! Granted, 640x360, but that's good enough for a tiny screen!

 

[Adamsappel]

This is where BBM for iOS or Whatsapp come in handy. BBM is also more secure andvworks well for me on my iPhone. It automatically resizes a 2MB photo to maybe 64kb

 

[BenTrovato]

This is where BBM for iOS or Whatsapp come in handy. BBM is also more secure andvworks well for me on my iPhone. It automatically resizes a 2MB photo to maybe 64kb

I like how whatsapp does it better. I find the quality in BBM photos just a little sub par. On the other hand though, I've been using BBM for over 6 months and it's not hogging up very much space for attachments so that's nice

 

[Adamsappel]

Whatsapp surely does it better and its performance is exemplary. I have also used WeChat but removed it as it has sevurity issues. Whatsapp also has vulnerabilities but that should not worry the average user at all.

Yes, the BBM picture quality is on deficit.

 

[Siderz]

I prefer how you can do it on Telegram.

You either click "Choose photo" and send it compressed, or you click "Document", and then can pick a photo to be sent uncompressed. If you send as a document, it won't automatically download so you're not gonna waste people's storage/data cap on uncompressed photos.

 

[Gus320]

'Mini Pxt' App solves this problem

Mini Pxt was built for exactly this. It resizes and compresses up to 10 pics at a time and puts them in an iMessage ready to send.

I wrote it so I didn't use up so much data on my capped plan - or use up data on my friends' plans. Give it a try! https://itunes.apple.com/app/mini-pxt/id878540590?mt=8&uo=4 That's the (cheap!) full version. If that link doesn't get you there, just search for 'Mini Pxt' in the App Store

There's a free trial out there too, but without the ability to customise, or send more than one photo at a time.

 

[Kevin L.]

'Mini Pxt' App solves this problem

Mini Pxt was built for exactly this. It resizes and compresses up to 10 pics at a time and puts them in an iMessage ready to send.

You're a genius, Gus320!!! I always assumed iMessage was compressing my photos, but I recently realized it's burning through my small 200mb data plan. Thanks!