Platform dimension guides are long, out of date within months, and mostly redundant, because what actually matters is the aspect ratio, not the exact pixel count. Get the shape right and the platform will scale it sensibly. Get it wrong and it crops your subject's head off.
The four shapes
- Square, 1:1 - the safe default for feed posts. 1080x1080 is the standard.
- Portrait, 4:5 - takes more vertical space in a feed, so it gets more attention. 1080x1350.
- Vertical, 9:16 - stories, reels, shorts, anything full-screen on a phone. 1080x1920.
- Landscape, 1.91:1 - link previews and Open Graph cards. 1200x630.
Every preset size, with its ratio
These are the exact presets our resize tool offers as one-click landing pages. Each row links to a page with the size already filled in; drop a photo, pick crop or fit, download.
| Size (px) | Aspect ratio | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| 1080x1080 | 1:1 | Instagram post, square feed image |
| 1080x1350 | 4:5 | Instagram portrait post |
| 1080x1920 | 9:16 | Story, Reel, Short, TikTok |
| 1200x630 | 1.91:1 | Open Graph link preview |
| 1280x720 | 16:9 | YouTube thumbnail |
| 1920x1080 | 16:9 | Full HD, video cover, presentation slide |
| 1500x500 | 3:1 | X / Twitter header |
| 851x315 | 2.7:1 | Facebook cover photo |
| 400x400 | 1:1 | Profile picture |
| 512x512 | 1:1 | App icon, avatar |
| 180x180 | 1:1 | Apple touch icon |
| 150x150 | 1:1 | Thumbnail |
| 500x500 | 1:1 | Small square, product tile |
| 800x800 | 1:1 | Medium square, shop listing |
| 1024x1024 | 1:1 | Large square, AI image input |
| 2048x2048 | 1:1 | Large square, print-ready social |
| 300x250 | 6:5 | Medium rectangle display ad |
| 728x90 | 8.1:1 | Leaderboard display ad |
Much of that table is 1:1. Squares are forgiving, so if you only prepare one crop of a photo, make it square and you are covered for avatars, icons and feed posts.
The link preview is the one people forget
When someone shares your page, the image that appears is your Open Graph image, and if you have not set one the platform picks something arbitrary or shows nothing. 1200x630 is the size to produce. It is also the one image on this list that is worth designing deliberately, because it is what people see before deciding whether to click.
Safe zones
Platforms lay their own interface over your image, and the overlaps are predictable. For 9:16 stories and reels, keep anything important out of roughly the top 250 pixels and bottom 250 pixels of a 1080x1920 frame, where the profile header, captions and reply bar sit. For a 1500x500 header, the profile picture covers the bottom-left corner on most layouts, so put the subject centre or right. For anything shown as a circle, an avatar or a profile picture, imagine the largest circle that fits inside the square and keep the subject inside it; the corners are always cut off. Feed images are safest in the middle 80%, since grid previews are cropped to square.
Crop, do not squash
Changing a photo's aspect ratio has exactly two honest options: crop away the parts that do not fit, or pad with empty space. Stretching to fit distorts faces and is immediately obvious. Our resize tool offers all three modes, and here is how they behave:
- Crop to fill scales the image until it covers the whole frame, then trims the overflow equally from both sides, so the crop is always centred. Right for photographs, and the default on every preset page.
- Fit and pad scales the image until the whole thing fits inside the frame, then centres it and fills the leftover strips. With PNG or WebP output the padding is transparent; with JPEG it is white, because JPEG cannot store transparency. Right for logos, screenshots and graphics that must stay complete.
- Stretch forces the image to the exact size with no cropping and no padding. Only use it when the source is already the right shape.
If the centred crop cuts off the wrong part, crop by hand first with crop and rotate to choose the framing, then resize.
Upload bigger than you think, but not enormous
Every platform re-compresses what you upload. Feeding it an already-compressed 80KB file means it compresses an image that has been compressed once, and the artifacts compound visibly. Upload at full target dimensions and reasonably high quality, and let the platform do its own pass. The resize tool exports JPEG at quality 92 for exactly this reason.
There is a ceiling to this, though: uploading a 12 megapixel original for a 1080 pixel slot just means the platform's resizer, not yours, decides how it looks. Resize to the target size yourself, then upload.
File size limits
Most feed uploads accept several megabytes, and a 1080x1350 JPEG at quality 92 is usually 300KB to 800KB, so size is rarely the problem for posts. Where limits bite is elsewhere: profile pictures and cover images often have a low cap, ad platforms enforce per-format limits that can be as small as 150KB for display banners, and email signatures or forum avatars may want under 100KB. When you need to hit a number, use a target-size page such as compress to 150KB or compress to 1MB; it searches for the highest quality that fits.
Profile pictures and icons
Profile images are displayed as circles almost everywhere, so keep the subject centred and leave margin at the edges. Square source, generous padding. For favicons and app icons, which have their own constraints entirely, the favicon generator produces the whole set of sizes at once.