icloud.com - My photos are half resolution after downloading

HI whatever2079,

Welcome to the Apple Community.

The way I understand it you likely have iCloud settings that allow you to save storage space on your iPhone.

It seems many users prefer these settings for keeping the full resolution photos in iCloud, and lower-res copies on iPhone.

There is an Apple Support article online:

Use iCloud Photos on iPhone

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iph961b96c4d/ios

In the article, if you scroll to "Save Space on your iPhone"

Says:

When Optimize iPhone Storage is turned on,

all your full‑resolution photos and videos are stored in iCloud in their original formats,

with storage-saving versions kept on your iPhone as space is needed.

Optimize iPhone Storage is turned on by default.

To turn it off, go to Settings  > [your name] > iCloud > Photos, then tap Optimize iPhone Storage.

You can download full-res versions of your photos anytime from iCloud:

Upload and download photos using iCloud.com

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/icloud/mmb5dbaf376f/icloud

Above article says:

If you want to download the original version of the photo or video, click and hold , select Unmodified Original and then click Download. The unmodified original version is in the same file format that was originally captured or imported and doesn’t include any edits.

Hope this helps you :)

I am getting the same when downloading iPhone 11 Pro Max Portrait mode photos at www.icloud.com.

• When downloading the Portraits as "unmodified Originals" the pixel size of the HEIC file is 3024 × 4032, but downloading the edited version with a Portrait Mode effect as "Most Compatible" will result in a JPEG preview with just 1536 × 2048 pixels, only half the resolution.

When I test this with older Portrait mode photos, taken on the iPhone X, the jpegs of the edited versions are having the same pixel size as the originals.

It seems to be a bug - we should be able to download the edited versions with the portrait effects at the same geometric resolution as the original.

Thanks for posting to the Apple Community.

We are all Mac users, just like you.

So if you want to get the message to Apple, you might want to send your feedback on to Apple. 

There's a webpage for sending feedback, to reach those who may be in a position to make changes:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/

Exact same issue for me also with an iPhone 11 Pro. Very frustrating as some of the photos I wish to sell, but unless I can get the full resolution down without losing the bokeh effect then it's a waste of time. In addition to that I've also noticed the HEIC files seems to remove any editing done on the phone such as colour correction etc. Basically unmodified original is just that, removes bokeh, colour correction, filters, the lot. Which would make sense assuming the .jpeg files were actually full res.

Hope Apple are actually aware of these issues and planning on resolving it!

Whole thing could probably do with an overhaul anyway. Bug or not the way I have to manually select unmodified original all the time to get the full resolution is pretty counterintuitive.