Viewing the full-sized version of any image on a WordPress site is quite a bit easier than you may think. If you’re looking at a resized image on a WordPress site and want to see the full-sized original image, today’s Quick Guide is for you.

To view the full-sized version of any WordPress image, you’ll use a browser trick that’s based on the way WordPress’s system of custom image sizes alters image file URLs. For the full rundown on how to do this, watch the video below:

And here’s a text guide to the same information:

How to View Full-Sized Images in WordPress

There are two fundamental steps to this trick:

1. Opening the image in a new tab. This lets you work with the image—and its URL—directly.
2. Removing size modifiers from the URL. This is the main piece of the trick.

See the video for how to open images in a new tab, then read below.

Locating and Removing WordPress’s URL-based Image Size Modifiers

WordPress automatically generates multiple sizes of every image that you upload to the site, and it automatically creates a custom URL for each new image size it makes.

And so, to see the original image size, all you need to do is to remove the “custom” piece of the URL. In the video’s first example, here’s how that worked:

1. I uploaded an image named stock_photo.jpg.
2. WordPress placed that image’s main file, at https://pressupinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/stock_photo.jpg.
3. Many other sizes of that image were also generated, such as the “Featured Image” size of that image, at https://pressupinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/stock_photo-760x290.jpg.
4. After that, I used WordPress’s image editor to crop the image; these changes are also reflected in the image’s URL, giving the final URL of https://pressupinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/stock_photo-e1473264267322-760x290.jpg.

Knowing this, all you have to do to get the full-sized image is delete the URL modifiers. In other words, you start with this:

https://pressupinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/stock_photo-e1473264267322-760x290.jpg

And delete WordPress’s URL modifiers to get this:

https://pressupinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/stock_photo.jpg

That’s the full size of the image, which you’re free to view in-browser!

Viewing the Full Size of WordPress Images Served via CDN

Sites using content delivery networks (CDNs) serve images slightly differently, but it’s the same basic trick. You start with:

https://i0.wp.com/wpshout.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/reading_rainbow.jpg?resize=640%2C294&ssl=1

And remove URL modifiers to get the full-sized image at:

https://i0.wp.com/wpshout.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/reading_rainbow.jpg

And That’s How to View WordPress Full-Sized Images!

I find this trick useful all the time both in my work, and in my general use of the internet: the WordPress world (that’s now about a third of the web!) is suddenly full of big, beautiful, full-sized images anytime I want them. Thanks for reading!