diff --git a/libs/pageserver_api/src/models.rs b/libs/pageserver_api/src/models.rs
index 318dd307d7..608459c4c3 100644
--- a/libs/pageserver_api/src/models.rs
+++ b/libs/pageserver_api/src/models.rs
@@ -470,6 +470,7 @@ pub enum CompactionAlgorithm {
 #[strum(serialize_all = "kebab-case")]
 pub enum ImageCompressionAlgorithm {
     Zstd,
+    ZstdHigh,
     LZ4,
 }
 
diff --git a/pageserver/ctl/src/layers.rs b/pageserver/ctl/src/layers.rs
index 7373d7efe5..d0735cb1b6 100644
--- a/pageserver/ctl/src/layers.rs
+++ b/pageserver/ctl/src/layers.rs
@@ -303,6 +303,8 @@ pub(crate) async fn main(cmd: &LayerCmd) -> Result<()> {
 
             println!("Listing gave {} keys", files_list.keys.len());
 
+            tokio::fs::create_dir_all(&layers_dir).await?;
+
             let semaphore = Arc::new(Semaphore::new(parallelism.unwrap_or(1) as usize));
 
             let mut tasks = JoinSet::new();
diff --git a/pageserver/src/tenant/blob_io.rs b/pageserver/src/tenant/blob_io.rs
index 919b1a5162..99ddcf6f7c 100644
--- a/pageserver/src/tenant/blob_io.rs
+++ b/pageserver/src/tenant/blob_io.rs
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@
 //! len <  128: 0XXXXXXX
 //! len >= 128: 1XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX
 //!
+use async_compression::Level;
 use bytes::{BufMut, BytesMut};
 use pageserver_api::models::ImageCompressionAlgorithm;
 use tokio::io::AsyncWriteExt;
@@ -266,9 +267,16 @@ impl<const BUFFERED: bool> BlobWriter<BUFFERED> {
                 const ZSTD: u8 = UNCOMPRESSED | 0x10;
                 const LZ4: u8 = UNCOMPRESSED | 0x20;
                 let (high_bit_mask, len_written, srcbuf) = match algorithm {
-                    Some(ImageCompressionAlgorithm::Zstd) => {
+                    Some(ImageCompressionAlgorithm::Zstd | ImageCompressionAlgorithm::ZstdHigh) => {
                         let mut encoder =
-                            async_compression::tokio::write::ZstdEncoder::new(Vec::new());
+                            if matches!(algorithm, Some(ImageCompressionAlgorithm::ZstdHigh)) {
+                                async_compression::tokio::write::ZstdEncoder::with_quality(
+                                    Vec::new(),
+                                    Level::Precise(6),
+                                )
+                            } else {
+                                async_compression::tokio::write::ZstdEncoder::new(Vec::new())
+                            };
                         let slice = srcbuf.slice(..);
                         encoder.write_all(&slice[..]).await.unwrap();
                         encoder.flush().await.unwrap();
diff --git a/pageserver/src/tenant/storage_layer/image_layer.rs b/pageserver/src/tenant/storage_layer/image_layer.rs
index c1cb328bad..b337a14160 100644
--- a/pageserver/src/tenant/storage_layer/image_layer.rs
+++ b/pageserver/src/tenant/storage_layer/image_layer.rs
@@ -382,6 +382,7 @@ impl ImageLayer {
         let image_compressions = [
             None,
             Some(ImageCompressionAlgorithm::Zstd),
+            Some(ImageCompressionAlgorithm::ZstdHigh),
             Some(ImageCompressionAlgorithm::LZ4),
         ];
         let mut stats = Vec::new();