Honey, the cell phone provider shrunk the kid's (photos)!

My family at Christmas 2019.

Over the Christmas holidays many people send photos to and from each other via text messages.

While this seems like a great idea, especially considering the resolution most modern phones have in their cameras, what is not so widely known is that most carriers (cell phone providers) have very restrictive limits on the size of picture they actually send.They will not stop you from sending the photos, but will greatly reduce them in size on the other end. What looks to you as a beautiful, priceless snapshot, can get reduced to something resembling an old time television picture.

I saw this last week when a relative of mine sent six pictures in one text, the cell phone company reduced them in size to such an extent that they were a blurry mess. Even if one changes the settings in their camera there is no guarantee the picture will not be heavily shrunk. Making it impossible to ever get a nice printout. This photo started out as a 4 megapixel image. When I received it on my phone it was 33K. That's reduction of 51 times  (approximately). This is the untouched photoas it was received on my phone

Two rules of thumb to follow:

1. If you are sending pictures via text, send only one per text. The more you send in a single text the more they become compressed.

2. If you really want to make sure that your photo stays intact, use one of the many online storage options and upload your photos to the cloud and then distribute a link to them in your text.

A cautionary note. If you are using one of these cloud-based download services to store and retrieve your photos frequently. It is best to do it while the phone is hooked up to your Wi-Fi at home to avoid exceeding your cell phone plan "data" limit.

Patrick