WordPress 5.3 introduces a new way to manage images by detecting “big” images and generating a “web-optimized maximum size” of them. How does it work? When a new image is uploaded, WordPress will detect if it is a “big” image by checking if its height or its width is above a big_image threshold. The default threshold value is 2560px, filterable with the new big_image_size_threshold filter. If an image height or width is above this threshold, it will be scaled down, with the threshold being used as max-height and max-width value. The scaled-down image will be used as the largest available size. In this case, the original image file is stored in the uploads directory and its name is stored in another array key in the image meta array: original_image. To be able to always get the path to an originally uploaded image a new function wp_get_original_image_path() was introduced. Disabling the scaling The scaling is controlled by the big_image_size_threshold filter. Returning false from the filter callback will disable it.