August 14, 2013. Telegram for iOS is launched. The largest iPhone's screen is the 640×1136 pixels of iPhone 5. LTE coverage is in its infancy. In that world of small screens and slow cell networks it makes perfect sense to limit the sizes of images sent in chats. Every image sent in Telegram is automatically downscaled until it fits in 1280×1280 pixels.
My suggestion here is simple: outgrow the old limit, stop downscaling to 1280×1280, start downscaling to 2560×2560 pixels. That would allow undisturbed screenshots from QHD screens and from fullHD. That would lose less details from frames of 4K cameras.
A surprisingly good thing is that Telegram already permits 2560×2560 pixels on its servers. If you use Telegram Desktop version 3.5.6 beta (that is the first TD version that does not downscale or recompress most images when saving), then you may discover that sometimes (albeit rarely) an image sent by a bot (such as https://t.me/kepka_support/93637 for example) or by an old webogram (such as https://t.me/kepka_support/93640 for example) is actually already a QHD image and thus the newest Telegram Desktop happily saves that image in its QHD glory (2560×1151 pixels for these examples).
Hence my suggestion is limited in its scope to the official client applications. Telegram for Android, Telegram for iOS, Telegram for macOS, Telegram Desktop, Telegram web apps. All of those should stop downscaling images to 1280×1280 when sending, all of those should embrace the apparent server-side limit of 2560×2560 pixels. Of course, some of them would have to stop downscaling when saving as well. (Telegram for Android, as far as I see, downscales both of the above 2560×1151 examples when it saves them.)
The usual workaround here is sending “as a file” instead of “as a picture”. (Uncheck “Compress images” in Telegram Desktop, choose “Send without compression” in Telegram on Android, and so on.) You may deliver your fullHD or QHD (or even 4K or 8K) “as a file”, indeed. However, small and cropped thumbnails of such “files” are no match to the immediate availability of the images delivered by “pictures”.
It's summer 2024, and Android/iOS apps still compress images terribly...
B
Bujno
In Telegram Desktop 5.5.6 beta x64 there is a settings section called Experimental settings, which has a switch called "Send large photos (Increase the side limit on compressed images to 2560px)".
Mark Grey
They were supposed to add the ability to send HD images with a resolution of up to 2560 pixels in the latest Android app update, i.e., increasing the pixel limit by 4 times.
However, instead of the promised "4 times," the limit was only increased by 2.56 times (to 2048 pixels per side).
I hope this was an oversight, and they will fix it soon, so the "HD photos" option will have a 2560-pixel-per-side limit, and the app will correctly download existing 2560p images instead of their downscaled 1280p versions.
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https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/commit/84288112fc2a6dd16f9664f8fb5d9b97b78f4712
Hope it gets accepted and merged.
However, instead of the promised "4 times," the limit was only increased by 2.56 times (to 2048 pixels per side).
I hope this was an oversight, and they will fix it soon, so the "HD photos" option will have a 2560-pixel-per-side limit, and the app will correctly download existing 2560p images instead of their downscaled 1280p versions.
HD Photos on Telegram Android wrongly capped at... #51224