Images uploaded into Moodle are being smoothed in 4.x+, and there seems to be no way to disable this. It's especially bad for images like profile photos, which are badly blurred and pixelated, even when the source photo is high quality. It's also happening to photos uploaded directly into courses. 

I've verified this issue is happening in multiple browsers on multiple 4.x+ sites, including one that's self-hosted, another that uses a hosting company, and even a university site hosted by Moodle US. 

I've also verified this issue does not happen in Moodle sites running 3.10 or 3.11. Unfortunately, I was able to confirm it happens in 4.1 by testing it on HQ's sandbox demo site. Ideally there should be a way to disable this because it degrades the quality of properly sized images. 

STEPS TO REPLICATE

1. Log into the Moodle Sandbox as an instructor: https://moodle.org/demo 
2. Set your browser's zoom to 100%
3. Take a screenshot of any pre-existing content on the page (I recommend taking a screenshot of text since it'll be easier to spot the differences later)
4. Size the screenshot to a width of 800px
   • I've added this step because the Moodle Docs guidance says to pre-size your photos before uploading them: https://docs.moodle.org/400/en/Images#Editing_an_uploaded_image And because the only workaround I've found for this issue is to upload a larger version of my file, then tell Moodle to display it in smaller dimensions. 
5. Turn editing on in the sandbox course
6. Open the Activity Chooser and add a Page
7. Give it a name, then use the editor to upload the image into the content area
8. Save
9. Open the screenshot in your preferred photo-viewing app on your device
10. Drag the window of your photo viewing app partly over the image you uploaded into your course to compare the quality

WHAT I EXPECT

My expectation is that the fidelity of both images will match like it does when I upload it to other non-Moodle websites, in my email, or just in the browser itself as a file. 

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS

The image is smoothed, making it appear muddy and/or blurry. It lacks the crispness of the original. I'll attach a screenshot comparison for reference, which I took on HQ's demo sandbox site. 

If there's a good reason for the motion smoothing, then that's fine, but there should at least be a simple toggle in Site Administration to disable this functionality. 

TROUBLESHOOTING STEPS PERFORMED

To date, I have:

1. Repeated the Steps to Replicate on multiple sites running 4.0 and 4.1 (image smoothing is present)
2. Repeated the Steps to Replicate on sites running both 3.11 and 3.10 (image smoothing is not present)
3. Emailed the image to myself and compared it to the original to verify it wasn't a browser or device issue (no image smoothing)
4. Repeated the Steps to Replicate in multiple browsers, as well as on Windows and Mac
5. Directly opening the image in my browser (no image smoothing)