Facebook makes photo upload file size reduction software open source

Facebook has open sourced the software it uses in its apps to reduce the file size of photos for uploading. Other developers may also use Spectrum if they wish.

The software is called Spectrum and is on GitHub. The software makes files smaller before uploading to make uploading more reliable and reduce the data usage of the app, Facebook reports. The software is now more needed than before as the file size of photos from smartphones is increasing with the advent of high-resolution cameras.

Facebook developed the software in C++, with a small layer of Java for Android apps and Objective-C for iOS. As a result, it should be easy to push code changes to both operating systems without too much effort. Images would be 15 percent smaller with Spectrum’s encoding, the company claims. It’s not the first time Facebook has posted code from a project on GitHub. It has made dozens of projects open source in recent years.