Instagram Post Size

Instagram's help article on image resolution explains what happens to the photos you share. A photo wider than 1080 pixels is sized down to 1080. A photo narrower than 320 pixels is enlarged to 320. Anything in between keeps its own width, provided its shape is within the supported range.

That makes 1080 the useful number. A photo straight from a phone camera is several times wider, and Instagram will scale it down anyway, using its own resampling and compression. Doing the resize yourself first gives you control of the crop and of the sharpness, and it uploads faster over a mobile connection.

Location and camera details are removed from the resized files by default, which is worth having for photos taken at home before they go on a public profile.

Instagram accepts shapes between a wide landscape and a tall portrait, and its help text states the range as an aspect ratio. At 1080 pixels wide, the widest landscape it allows, 1.91:1, is 566 pixels tall. The square is 1080 by 1080. The portrait limit is 3:4: Instagram's help page gives the range as 1.91:1 to 3:4, a height of up to 1440 pixels at 1080 wide. Earlier versions of the same page ended at 4:5, which is 1080 × 1350.

We use 1080 × 1350 as the default because it sits well inside the range and matches the 4:5 templates many people already work from; change the height to 1440 for the full 3:4 frame, the shape of an upright phone photo. Portrait posts also take up more of the screen in the feed than square or landscape ones, which is why many people prefer them for photos of people, food and products.

Height is the only number you need to change between shapes. The width stays at 1080 for all three, which keeps every post at the full resolution Instagram stores and means the numbers on this page carry over from one post to the next.

Most phone photos are 4:3 or 3:4. Going to a 4:5 portrait from a 3:4 photo trims only a sliver from the top and bottom, while a landscape photo forced into portrait loses a large part of its width. Crop to fill keeps the center by default; set Crop position to Smart (subject) to let the tool look for the main subject, or to Top for portraits where heads are near the upper edge.

If no crop is acceptable, choose Pad with color under Fit. The whole photo then sits inside the 1080 × 1350 frame with bars in the color you pick, a look that works well for wide photos posted as portraits.

Photos in one carousel are shown in a single frame shape, so pictures of different shapes end up cropped to match. Resizing the whole set together avoids surprises: add up to 20 images, keep the same width and height for all, and check each crop before posting. Keep the output as JPG for photos; PNG only helps for graphics with sharp text.

For a profile picture, which Instagram shows as a circle, a square is what you need, and the Resize Image page takes any size you type. To cut out an area by hand first, use the Crop Image tool, then resize the result here.