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Important Social Media Photo Dimensions: Designing on Social

Social Media Photo Dimensions: Facebook

There are many ways to approach design capabilities on Facebook. These possibilities provide endless options for images and upload sizes. Still, it’s important to use recommended upload sizes to ensure the best quality for your content.

The size recommendations below apply to both personal Facebook accounts and Business pages. While images may appear on your feed or post at a certain dimension, we recommend uploading at a different, larger size. But don’t worry, we’ll go over both!

Facebook Profile Image  

On Facebook, your profile photo is formatted as a circle with the minimum size being 180px x 180px. It appears as 170px x 170px on desktop and 128px x 128px on smartphones.  

Facebook Cover Image

On your profile, the cover image or cover photo is the large image displayed behind your profile photo at the top of the page. The minimum size is 400px  x 150px, but we’d recommend sizing up due to the way it’s displayed. Cover photos display at 820px x 150px on desktop and 640px x 360px, so we’d recommend a photo 820px x 360 px with important information kept within the “safe zones” of where the image crops in different displays.

Also, keep in mind the placement of your profile photo in reference to your cover photo. The profile photo is always on top of the cover photo, so be sure to design around this or choose an image harmonious with the profile photo placement.

Facebook Shared Image

A shared image or image post is one of the most common types of sharing and is recommended to be sized as 1200px x 630px.

Facebook Shared Link Image

Similar to sharing an image, but with a few more fields and options for customization. With a shared link, you can choose how you want your image displayed with the link as the following options:  A square photo, with the image on the left and text on the right or a rectangle photo, with the image on top and the text below. Although both of these images get scaled down for display, it’s recommended to be uploaded as 1200px x 630px to maintain image resolution.

Facebook Highlighted Image

Appears on a page as 843px x 504px, but recommended upload size is 1200px x 717px. Highlighted images are great for announcements or celebrations.

Facebook Event Image

These images are scaled down to 470px x 174px, but it is recommended to upload at 1920 x 1080.

A factor in making a note of is Facebook’s regulations on text content within ads. Although we didn’t go over any ad sizes, many times users or businesses may promote existing imagery as an ad or promoted post—make sure that no more than 20% of the ad contains text if you want to promote! Too much text on your image may disqualify you from getting approved for promotion.

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Social Media Photo Dimensions: Instagram

Instagram is known for using square images, but in recent years they've adopted additional sizing options for photos .  Within your feed, Instagram provides several options for posting: Square, Portrait, and Landscape, proving to us that while it is hip to be square...you don’t have to be!

Instagram Profile Image

Your profile image displays at 110px x 110px, but the ideal upload size is 180px x 180 px.

Instagram Feed

When you upload a photo to Instagram, regardless of what type of phone you are using, Instagram makes sure to upload it at the best quality resolution possible. The maximum resolution for Instagram is 1080 pixels wide, making the ideal size for each aspect ratio as follows: 1080px x 1080px for Square (1:1), 1080px x 1350px for Portrait (4:5), and 1080px x 608px Landscape (1.91:1).

If you’re running an ad or wanting to have as much real estate on the scroll feed as possible, it could be argued that the best bang for your buck would be the Portrait setting based on pure size alone.

Instagram Story Dimensions

Recommended resolution is 1080px x 1920px (aspect ratio 9:16). The max file size is 4GB (huge!)

Instagram Video Dimensions

Recommended resolution is 1080px x 1920px (aspect ratio 9:16) for vertical video and the reverse, 1920px x 1080px (16:9), for horizontal video.

Social Media Photo Dimensions: Twitter

We usually think of words (in 140 characters of less, of course) when we think of Twitter—but it’s actually a great place for sharing designed content.

Twitter Profile Image

The displayed image appears at 200px x 200px on your profile, in-stream every time you tweet, and in the “Who to Follow” suggestion box. The recommended upload size is  400px x 400 px and the max file size is 2 MB.

Twitter Header Image

Similar to a Cover Photo on Facebook, this image spans the topmost area on your Profile. The recommended upload size is 1500px x 500px, at a 2:1 ratio.

Twitter In-Stream Image

The recommended aspect ratio for in-stream photos is 16:9, with a minimum of 600px x 335px and ideal upload size of 1200px x 675px. You can post up to four images at a time on and in-stream tweet, although the images’ preview will change based on the number of images.

For example, two images appear side by side in 7:8 ratios; three images appear with a 7:8 ratio image on the left side, with two stacked 4:7 ratio images on the right side; four images appear in a 2x2 grid with 2:1 ratios. Again, if you have text content in your designs, be aware that in some instances, information can get cropped out of the first view depending on what size you upload at or how many images you upload.

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Social Media Photo Dimensions: Pinterest

It’s easy to see how size plays an important factor on Pinterest. Anything too small gets lost, or anything too long could have Pinners lose interest.

Pinterest Profile Image

Your profile picture displays at 180px x 180px, but the ideal upload size is 600px x 600px.

Standard Pin Size

Pinterest recommends a 2:3 aspect ratio, or 1000px x 1500px for their standard Pin size. Anything greater may end up getting cropped and cut off in the user’s feeds. The maximum file size for this asset is 32 MB. These can be used as promoted Pins as well.

Pinterest Board Cover Photo

The board cover frame is square (1:1) and paired with two recent Pin images stacked on the right side. The recommended size for this asset is 600x600.

Pinterest Standard Width Video

Videos that are square (1:1) or vertical (2:3, 9:16) are recommended. We recommend dimensions of 1080px x 1080px or 1080px x 1920px. The maximum file size for this asset is 2 GB. These can be used as promoted Pins as well.

Pinterest Promoted Video at Max. Width

Max Width Videos are  sized as  square (1:1) or widescreen (16:9). Max width videos cannot exceed the height of a 1:1 aspect ratio.  We recommend dimensions of 1080px x 1080px or 1920px x 1080px. TThe maximum file size for this asset is 2 GB.

Pinterest Promoted Carousels

Recommended aspect ratio of 1:1 or 2:3. We recommend dimensions of 1080px x 1080px or 1080px x 1920px. The maximum file size for this asset is 32 MB.

Don't worry about memorizing these design specs, we've got you covered with our Photo Dimension Guide!

DOWNLOAD FREE GUIDE

PIN THIS FOR LATER:

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Rosee Qualls

Rosee Qualls is a contributing designer at PLANOLY. She is an expert in branding, graphic design, and illustrations.

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