Unable to upload images

Downgrading the WP core to 5.2. will fix it. In the future I will upgrade WP very conservatively. Lesson learned.

Same problem here, started today suddenly after not doing any changes to the site at all. Guess I’m rolling back too.

So I think it’s the combination of PHP 7.3 vs WP 5.3
Now that I rolled back to PHP 7.2 I haven’t experienced any issues.

For me…I would love WP to resolve the issues, but for now: Problem Solved

@here thanks all for your support and comments!!!

My WP host tech support installed a plugin called “Default to GD” and now it works. I’m on WP 5.3 still.

S O L V E

WordPress 5.3 introduced a new way to manage images uploaded by detecting big images and generating a “web-optimized maximum size” of them.

Unfortunately, this feature seems to have a bug. When uploading ANY image to WordPress, users are reporting the following error: Post-processing of the image failed. If this is a photo or a large image, please scale it down to 2500 pixels and upload it again.

Until a WordPress update is released with a fix for the error, there are two ways to disable it:

Add a function to your child theme functions.php:
add_filter( ‘big_image_size_threshold’, ‘__return_false’ );

OR

Use a free plugin: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/disable-big-image-threshold/

A notice will appear in your WordPress dashboard when an update is available.

https://account.divi.pro/index.php?rp=/announcements/24/Image-Upload-Errors-in-WordPress-53.html

I have looked into this issue thoroughly, there is a lot of confusion about this and there are many different solutions mentioned. Here’s why:

It is the error message itself that is broken. Instead of mentioning “Post-processing of the image failed” blabla, it should actually be a generic error message. Whatever actual problem you are experiencing can be caused by many different issues: permissions, max_file_size settings etc. Before 5.3 this was the infamous HTTP ERROR message.

I have been downsizing my images, which works for the upload; but now, the images, which show up in the library thumbnails, load very, very slowly, when one clicks on them to edit images or add descriptions, etc. This is becoming a very frustrating issue to deal with. WP must be doing all it can to irritate users and drive them away. Not a very good business model.

Same problem, I scanned the computer and the problem was solved, I can’t explain anything else (this is definitely not an AVG ad)

Screen

Plugin worked.

Wasted A LOT of time tracking this down. WTF Automattic

Same problem here. Why was a notice of this not sent out??? Wowza. 5 weeks and not fixed??

I am receiving the same error message. The imaged is 1880 X 1880 well below the 2500 pixels. HELP!!!

Samuel Wood (Otto) (@otto42)
Worked for me. Thanks

I’m having the same issue, but it only started today (last time I updated my site was about a week ago, and I was able to add images just fine). Disabling Elementor hasn’t fixed it. Using the “BIG” threshold plugin recommended in this thread didn’t fix it, either. I’ve also tried logging out, logging back in; using another browser; going to Media and choosing “add new.” Nope. No joy.

Any other things I should try? I’d really like to get back to blogging, but I’m not going to be able to if I can’t upload images.

Thanks.

Just an update since I started this massive thread. I have tried most of these solutions on the many many wordpress sites I maintain and not one single solution works on all of them. As near as I can tell this is a fundamental flaw in the 5.3 versions of wordpress because that is the only common denominator since all the sites that I have kept on earlier releases all still work. Thanks for everyone who has suggested solutions, but I really hope the core wordpress development people could at least acknowledge that there is an ongoing issue that might be addressed for all the people on this thread.

@sensibilitypatterns I posted a work around on page 3 which seems to work.

Bit long in the tooth, but works.