Social platforms change their pixel recommendations regularly and resize uploads themselves. The more durable requirement is the aspect ratio: use the expected shape and you control the crop instead of leaving it to the platform.
Aspect ratios you will see often
- 1:1 (square); profile pictures nearly everywhere, and the safest feed-post shape. Crops of faces work best with breathing room above the head.
- 4:5 (portrait); the tallest shape most feeds allow for regular posts. Because it fills more vertical screen on a phone, portrait posts get more visual space than the same photo posted landscape.
- 9:16 (full vertical); stories, reels, shorts: anything full-screen on a phone.
- 16:9 (landscape); video thumbnails, link-preview cards, and header-style images.
- ~3:1 (wide banner); cover photos and channel banners. The exact ratio varies by platform, and these are also the most aggressively cropped between desktop and mobile; keep anything important dead center.
Crop deliberately; don't let the platform do it
When you upload a 4:3 camera photo where a square is expected, the platform center-crops it. Center is rarely where your subject is: heads get trimmed, the product ends up half out of frame. Cropping yourself, before upload, is the difference between choosing what the image says and letting an algorithm choose.
A tighter crop removes clutter and makes the subject clearer at thumbnail size. Shrink the preview to roughly postage-stamp size and check whether the subject remains recognizable.
Safe areas: where not to put text
Full-screen vertical formats overlay their own interface on your image: username and music info near the top, caption, buttons, and reply box near the bottom. Anything you place in roughly the top and bottom 15% of a 9:16 image risks being covered. Keep text and logos in the middle 60–70% of the frame. Banners have the same problem horizontally; profile pictures and buttons sit on top of them differently on every device.
Resolution and compression
Social platforms compress uploads again. I normally send them a clean, reasonably sized file and avoid trying to outguess the exact compression settings.
- Upload around 1,080–2,048 px on the long edge. Smaller images may be upscaled; larger images are usually reduced by the platform.
- Avoid double compression. Don't save at low JPG quality first; export at quality 85+ or PNG and let the platform's compressor be the only lossy step.
- Add slight sharpening to images with fine detail, since platform downscaling tends to soften them.
One photo, many shapes
Make each version from the highest-resolution original. The crop tool includes 1:1, 4:3, 16:9, and 3:2 presets plus custom dimensions. Use circle crop for profile images and the collage maker for several photos in one frame. Finish with resize & compress when a platform has a file-size limit.