Disable WordPress -scaled Images
Stop WordPress silently shrinking your big uploads
Runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
About the Disable WordPress -scaled Images
Disable WordPress scaled images. Since 5.3 WordPress downscales anything over 2560px and serves a "-scaled" copy instead of your original. It is the single most common reason an image looks soft after upload. This generates the filter that turns it off.
When you need it
Since WordPress 5.3, any upload wider or taller than 2560px is scaled down, and the smaller copy becomes the image your site serves. Use this tool if your photos look soft after upload, if you sell prints or high-resolution downloads, or if your theme needs hero images wider than 2560px.
How to use it
- Enter your image's width and height to see what WordPress will do with it.
- Choose to turn scaling off, or raise the threshold to a number you pick.
- Paste the PHP into a child theme's functions.php or a small plugin.
- Upload the image again. The filter only changes uploads made after it is active.
Common mistakes
- Expecting old images to change. They keep their scaled copy until you upload them again.
- Pasting the code into a parent theme's functions.php. A theme update replaces that file and your filter goes with it.
- Turning scaling off for every image on a busy blog. Very large originals cost visitors bandwidth, so raising the threshold is often the better trade.
- Deleting the original to save space. WordPress keeps the uploaded file next to the scaled copy and can still point to it.
Step by step with examples: how to disable WordPress scaled images, and why images look blurry after upload.
FAQ
Questions
Why does my image look blurry after uploading to WordPress?
Because since WordPress 5.3, any image whose longest edge exceeds 2560px is downscaled, and WordPress serves that '-scaled' copy instead of your original. Your original is still on disk — it is simply never used. This is the most common cause of soft images and almost nobody knows it exists.
Should I disable -scaled images entirely?
Only deliberately. Turning it off means WordPress serves your full-resolution original — which is right for photography and print-adjacent sites, and wrong for a normal blog, where shipping a 6000px hero to a phone is a real performance cost. Raising the threshold is often the better middle ground.
Does this fix images I already uploaded?
No. The filter only affects images uploaded after it is active. Existing images keep their -scaled copies until you re-upload them or regenerate thumbnails.