Send large photos without losing quality

Why do my photos lose quality when I send them?

Because most of the apps we use to share pictures are built for viewing on a phone screen, not for keeping the original. They resize and recompress photos to save bandwidth, and often strip metadata such as the capture date, location or camera settings on the way. The result looks fine on a phone and falls apart when printed or cropped.

• WhatsApp compresses photos sent as media; the HD option sends a sharper version, still not the original. Sending them as documents keeps them intact, but one by one and up to 2 GB per file.
• Text messages go through your carrier, which sets MMS size limits, and Apple notes the iPhone can compress attachments when needed.
• Email keeps the original, but stops at 20 to 35 MB per message (as of October 2026), which is often fewer than 10 phone photos.
• Social networks resize every upload and are not a way to hand over files.

A transfer link does not touch the files. What you upload is exactly what your recipient downloads: same pixels, same colour profile, same EXIF data. More on the WhatsApp case in sending large files on WhatsApp.

How to send large photos with Transfr

1. 1

   Step 1

   Select the photos or the folder

   Open Transfr and drop a whole folder, or pick photos from your computer or phone gallery. Up to 100 GB per transfer, with no limit on the number of files.

2. 2

   Step 2

   Turn on comments if you want feedback

   With comments on, your recipient can click a precise spot on a photo, or draw a box around an area, and leave a note.

3. 3

   Step 3

   Choose how to share

   Copy the link or email up to 10 people. Add a password for private albums, and choose how long the photos stay online (up to 7 days free, 60 with Pro).

4. 4

   Step 4

   Your recipient browses, then downloads

   Photos display as a gallery in the browser. They can download a single picture or the whole set.

How many photos can you send at once?

There is no cap on the number of files, only on the total size: 100 GB per transfer on the free plan. Here is what that means for common formats.

Sizes vary with the sensor, the scene and the settings, so treat these as orders of magnitude. For camera originals, see sending RAW photos to clients.

Preview and feedback in the browser

Nobody wants to download 3 GB to pick five favourites. On the download page, JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, AVIF and TIFF photos display as light previews generated from your originals, so the gallery opens quickly even on a phone. The originals stay untouched and are what gets downloaded.

With comments on, recipients can pin a note to a spot on a photo or select a region: “remove this sign”, “crop here”, “this one for the cover”. You get an email when a comment arrives. It is a simple way to run a selection or a retouching round without a separate proofing tool.

How to send large photos by email

Keep using your email, and drop the attachment. Create the transfer on Transfr, then either type your recipients’ addresses (they receive an email with the link and your message) or copy the link into your own Gmail or Outlook message. The email stays tiny, and nobody hits the 25 MB wall. Details for each provider in sending large files by email.

Sending photos from a phone

Open Transfr in Safari or Chrome, tap to add files and select photos from your library. Keep the screen on until the upload completes. To share the link, paste it into Messages, WhatsApp or an email: your contacts tap it and save the full-resolution photos to their own gallery. Guides for iPhone and Android go step by step, including sending from an Android phone to an iPhone.

Private photos: password and expiry

Family pictures, ID scans or unreleased work deserve more than a public link. Add a password, choose a short expiry, and limit the number of downloads. For maximum privacy, turn on end-to-end encryption: photos are encrypted on your device before upload, and Transfr never stores the key.

Photographers delivering to clients every week can go further with Pro: their own logo and background on the gallery page, links on their own domain, and tracking of which photos were viewed and downloaded. See file transfer for photographers.