How to make a file input upload the original image file instead of forcing conversion to jpeg on IOS

Question

When attempting to upload an image file stored on an iPhone running IOS 7 on the Safari browser, regardless of the original image format, the selected image files are always converted to a JPEG.

<input type="file" accept="image/*">

I have attempted to be more specific with the accept attribute such as image/png with this fiddle but have not had any luck.

Are there any known solutions, hacks or workarounds to preserve the original image file when uploading?

Answer 1

You can't. Mobile Safari for iOS is very limited when it comes to uploading. Your image will always be converted to JPEG with lower quality than the original image.

"Solutions" :

The obvious one is to go native (which probably beats the purpose of this question but I thought I'll throw it in anyway.)

The more "reasonable" solution is to ask the user to give you a link to the original picture (dropbox for example) or something of that sort. Still, not really a solution but like I said, currently there aren't any good solutions for this problem.