Send photos online at full quality, without an account
RAW, JPEG, HEIC, no compression · Updated May 2026
Most photo-sharing services compress your images by default. sto.care doesn't touch the file. Drag a folder of RAWs, get a link your recipient can download at full quality.
- 5 GB per upload, around 110 Canon R5 RAW files at 45 MB each
- No re-encoding, no quality loss, original metadata preserved
- Works for RAW (CR3, NEF, ARW), JPEG, HEIC, TIFF
- Free, no signup, 7-day expiry with revoke
The pitch most consumer photo apps make is convenience. The cost they don't mention is that the photo your recipient opens is rarely the photo you took. Default Google Photos backups resize anything over 16 megapixels. WhatsApp Media squeezes a 24 MP portrait into a 150 KB JPEG. iMessage drops quality on cellular. Facebook and Instagram strip EXIF and re-encode. If the original bytes matter, none of those channels carry them.
The Compression TrapWhat other photo-sharing tools do to your images
Google Photos has two backup modes: Original quality and Storage saver. Storage saver is the cheaper-on-quota default, and Google's own backup quality help page spells it out: photos are "stored at a slightly reduced quality", "may be compressed into a different image format, like a .jpg", and "if a photo is larger than 16 MP, it'll be resized to 16 MP". A 45 MP Canon R5 frame lands as a 16 MP JPEG. A 50 MP Sony A1 frame lands as a 16 MP JPEG. The compression isn't hidden, but it's the default for most users.
WhatsApp is more aggressive in the other direction. The 2 GB cap WhatsApp announced in May 2022 applies to documents. Photos sent through the gallery picker are treated as media and run through a resize-and-re-encode pipeline before they leave your phone, landing somewhere between 70 KB and 200 KB regardless of what went in. RAW files are refused outright. iMessage applies a softer version of the same idea, compressing on cellular and re-encoding HEIC to JPEG when the recipient isn't on iOS. Facebook and Instagram both re-encode every uploaded photo and strip most EXIF metadata in the process. None of these channels carry an original.
When Originals MatterThe cases where full quality is non-negotiable
Most snapshots survive the compression fine. The cases where the original actually matters are narrower:
- Wedding and portrait photographers delivering RAWs. CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF files have to arrive byte-identical for Lightroom or Capture One to open them with full edit latitude.
- Real-estate listings where Zillow and MLS expect full-size JPEGs; a resized 16 MP frame looks soft on a 27-inch monitor.
- Parents archiving family events. The file you save now should be the file your kid opens in 30 years, not a 2026-era compressed thumbnail.
- Designers and retouchers who need source EXIF. Lens profile, ICC profile, and white-balance metadata shape the edit; stripping it forces guesswork.
- Forensic and journalistic work where chain of custody depends on the file staying unmodified from the camera.
The WorkflowHow to send full-resolution photos through sto.care
Three steps. Open sto.care in any browser, drop the folder (or a zip of it) onto the upload zone, enter your email and the recipient's. When the upload finishes we mail you the share link plus a one-click revoke link. Paste the share link into whatever channel works (email, Slack, WhatsApp text, SMS) and the recipient downloads by tapping it. The link works for 7 days, after which the file is purged out of S3 by a lifecycle rule and the URL 404s. No tier upgrade extends that, no soft-delete window. sto.care is a delivery channel, not an archive.
Side By SidePhoto channels on one row
The pattern: consumer photo channels are tuned for cheap distribution, not for preserving what the camera produced. WeTransfer keeps originals but caps at 2 GB and 3 days. sto.care fits the slot where you need bigger uploads, no signup on either end, and a guarantee the bytes don't change in transit.
PrivacyHow the file is stored while the link is live
Files move from your browser to AWS S3 in eu-west-1 (Ireland) over TLS, and S3 writes every object to disk with AES-256 server-side encryption under AWS-managed keys. That's server-side, not end-to-end: AWS holds the keys. If your photos are sensitive enough that even that's too much trust, an end-to-end-encrypted tool with client-side keys fits better. For most photo-delivery jobs, TLS in transit plus AES-256 at rest with a 7-day window is the right shape of guarantee.
FAQCommon questions
Does sto.care compress photos when uploaded?
No. We don't re-encode, resize, or strip metadata. The bytes leaving your camera (or phone) are the bytes the recipient downloads, hash for hash. Files travel over TLS to AWS S3 in eu-west-1 and rest there with AES-256 server-side encryption until the 7-day expiry sweep removes them.
Will EXIF and metadata survive?
Yes. EXIF, IPTC, XMP, ICC profiles, GPS tags, capture time, lens model, copyright fields, all of it stays intact because we never re-encode the file. Compare that to Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp Media, which strip metadata as part of their upload pipeline.
How many RAW files fit in 5 GB?
Depends on the camera. Canon R5 CR3 at ~45 MB fits about 110 per upload. Sony A7 IV ARW at ~50 MB fits around 100. Nikon Z9 NEF at ~60 MB fits around 80. Fujifilm X-T5 RAF at ~45 MB fits about 110. iPhone HEIC at 2 to 4 MB runs into the thousands.
Can I send a HEIC file from iPhone?
Yes. HEIC, HEIF, and Live Photo HEIC pairs all upload as-is. We don't convert them to JPEG behind your back, which is what iMessage, Mail's Mail Drop, and most cloud-photo backups do when the recipient is on a non-Apple device. The recipient gets the exact .heic file your iPhone wrote.
Will the recipient download at full quality?
Yes. The download page gives them a signed URL straight to S3. Their browser pulls the file as one stream, no transcoding in the middle, no quality switch, no preview-then-original two-step. What you uploaded is what lands in their Downloads folder.
What if I need to send more than 5 GB?
Split the set across multiple uploads. Each gets its own link and its own 7-day expiry, so a wedding shoot of 600 RAWs at 50 MB each (around 30 GB) fits across six links. There's a soft limit of 10 uploads per hour per IP, well above what a single shoot needs.
Send the photo your camera took. Not a 16 MP copy.
UPLOAD PHOTOS →Sending photos through chat apps that compress them? See file too big for WhatsApp and file too big for iMessage. Comparing options for the source file? Read sto.care vs Google Drive or the full send large files free feature page.