Check out this article in their knowledgebase that will show you how to increase this via a custom php.ini file.

Personally, I set mine to at least 32MB as sometimes I have some really large media files that I don’t want to have to compress inside of Photoshop.

Instead, I use ShortPixel Image Optimizer which will automatically compress and optimize on upload.

It’s free for your first 100 images, then credits are pretty cheap. I went ahead and bought some as it really increased the loadtime of my blog.

Hope this gets you straightened out! Good luck!

My questions is this:

Is there a way to pre-size and crunch images BEFORE upload so they’re simply coordinated into the database like any other image normally would be?

That’s the question I’d like to have answered.

I’m reading that DreamHost is a possible reason for all of this trouble.

I’d like to PRE “crunch” the images before upload.

Is that possible?

In PHP image compression, both matter a lot.