Social media image sizes: how to fit photos without bad crops

Think in shapes first

Pixel sizes get the headlines, but the aspect ratio — the shape — matters more. If the shape is right, a platform can scale your image up or down cleanly; if it's wrong, something gets cropped or padded. Four shapes cover most of what you'll post:

Tip: Platforms change their recommended sizes from time to time. The values below are common, stable starting points; check each platform's current help page before an important campaign.

Sizes our presets produce

Resize Image has a Social media size option with these presets:

Each preset offers two ways to handle a photo whose shape doesn't match. Fill (crop edges) scales the photo to cover the whole frame and trims what sticks out, evenly from both sides. Fit (add white bars) keeps the whole photo and pads the leftover space with white. Fill looks more natural for photos; Fit is safer for designs or text that must not be cut. The image keeps its format, and you can resize up to 100 at a time.

Instagram posts and Stories

For the feed, resize for Instagram starts with the square 1080 × 1080 preset; switch to portrait 1080 × 1350 when you want the post to fill more of the screen, or 1080 × 1920 for Stories and Reel covers. If Fill would cut off something important — a face near the edge, text in a corner — crop first so you choose what stays.

Crop Image lets you drag the frame where you want it and lock it to 1:1, 4:5, 3:2 or 16:9. Crop to the shape, then resize to the exact pixels; the preset then has nothing left to trim.

YouTube thumbnails

YouTube shows thumbnails at 16:9, and 1280 × 720 is its recommended size. Resize for a YouTube thumbnail produces exactly that. Thumbnails appear very small in search results and on phones, so use large, bold text and keep it away from the bottom-right corner, where the video length is shown over the image. YouTube also limits the thumbnail's file size, so a large PNG design may need compressing afterwards with Compress Image.

Profile pictures

Most platforms ask for a square profile picture and then display it as a circle, so anything near the corners disappears. Upload a square image with the face centred and a little space around it.

If you want a round image to use elsewhere — a website, an email signature, a slide — Circle Crop Image cuts the largest centred circle out of a photo and makes the corners transparent. JPGs come out as PNG, because JPG can't store transparency; WebP and AVIF keep their format. Centre the face with a square crop first if it's off to one side.

Instagram grids and panoramas

A grid post splits one big image across several posts so they join up on your profile. Split Image into Grid cuts a picture into equal tiles — 3 × 3 for a classic grid, 1 × 3 for a swipeable panorama, up to 10 rows and 10 columns. Tiles are numbered left to right, top to bottom.

• Crop the shape first. Tiles take the image's proportions divided by the grid, so for square tiles in a 3 × 3 grid the whole image must be square.
• Post in reverse. Instagram shows the newest post first, so upload the highest-numbered tile first.
• Check how the profile grid currently looks. The shape of profile thumbnails has changed over the years; if it isn't square, a puzzle cut into square tiles won't line up perfectly.

A quick checklist before posting

• Pick the shape (1:1, 4:5, 16:9 or 9:16) before you pick the pixels.
• Crop deliberately when a face, logo or text is near an edge.
• Keep important content away from the edges of Stories, where the app draws buttons and captions.
• Use Fit rather than Fill when nothing may be cut off.