Why will a photo saved from Facebook not print properly?
Facebook re-encodes every photograph you upload and keeps a smaller copy — commonly no more than 2048 pixels on the long edge, and 960 on older uploads — so the file you download is not the file that was taken. At 2048 pixels a photograph prints an 8x10 at about 192 DPI, which is soft but usable, and it falls just short of 300 DPI even at 5x7.
What each route does to the file
Facebook stores a re-encoded copy at up to 2048 pixels on the long edge. Photographs uploaded years ago are often capped at 960. Downloading from a profile or an album gives you that copy, never the original, and there is no setting on your end that changes it.
A picture texted by MMS is usually the worst case. Carriers compress heavily, and 640 pixels on the long edge is common — enough for a 2x3 print and nothing larger. WhatsApp at standard quality sends about 1600 pixels; the sender can avoid that by choosing HD or sending the photo as a document. iMessage between iPhones normally sends the full photograph, unless Low Quality Image Mode is switched on.
A screenshot is limited by the screen, not the photograph. A recent iPhone screen is about 1179x2556, and a photograph inside a screenshot occupies only part of that, so screenshotting a picture to save it typically throws away three quarters of it. If you have taken a screenshot of a photograph, it is worth going back for the file itself.
What a 2048 pixel file can still print
Cropped to the 4:5 shape an 8x10 frame needs, a 2048 pixel photograph gives you about 1536x1920 — roughly 192 DPI at 8x10. That is below the 300 DPI standard and just below the 200 DPI line. In practice it prints as a slightly soft 8x10 that most people at a service would not remark on.
It does a 5x7 at about 292 DPI, which is close enough to sharp. It will not do a 16x20 or a 20x24 at any standard worth ordering: at 20x24 the same file lands near 76 DPI, which looks pixelated even from across a room.
So the practical answer for a Facebook download is: the program and the register-table portrait are fine, and the easel print needs a better source.
Where the original probably is
On the phone of whoever posted it. A photograph taken on a phone and uploaded to Facebook still exists at full size in that phone’s camera roll or in its cloud backup, and the person who took it can send it to you directly. Ask them to share it by AirDrop, by email, or through a link from iCloud or Google Photos — those three routes do not re-compress it. Ask them not to text it.
If the person who posted it cannot be reached but you can sign in to the account, Facebook’s "Download your information" tool exports every photograph the account uploaded. They are the same re-encoded copies, so this helps you find a photograph rather than a larger version of it.
And if the original was a paper photograph that somebody photographed to post it, the paper one is the better source. Photographing that print carefully with a phone will usually beat a download.
Checking the file you have
The free print-size check tells you the pixel dimensions of the file on your computer and what it prints cleanly at, size by size. That is the fastest way to find out whether the copy you were sent is the full one or a compressed one — the pixel count answers it immediately.
Nothing is uploaded to run the check. The photograph is read by your own browser and stays on your own computer.
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Last updated 2026-09-10.