Instagram image sizes and how to resize for them

Instagram recompresses everything you upload. You cannot avoid that, but you can control what it starts from. A photo that already has the right shape and width only gets compressed. A photo in the wrong shape gets cropped by the app, and a photo of the wrong width gets resampled too, which is what makes pictures look soft or mushy after posting.

This guide gives the sizes, then a workflow for preparing photos on a computer or phone, and the fixes for the usual quality problems.

The sizes that matter

Instagram displays feed images at a width of 1080 pixels. Uploading wider does not add detail; the extra pixels are thrown away. Uploading narrower means the app has to enlarge the photo.

• Square post: 1080 × 1080 px (1:1). The safe default for anything with text or a centred subject.
• Portrait post: 1080 × 1350 px (4:5). Takes the most vertical space in the feed, which is why most photographers use it.
• Landscape post: 1080 × 566 px (1.91:1). The widest shape the feed accepts; anything wider is cropped.
• Stories and Reels: 1080 × 1920 px (9:16), full screen on a phone.
• Profile picture: square, at least 320 × 320 px. It is shown as a small circle, so keep the face centred with space around it.
• Carousel: all slides use one shape, chosen when you upload. Prepare every slide in the same ratio, or the app crops the odd ones out.

The profile grid shows posts as vertical 3:4 thumbnails. A 4:5 portrait loses a thin strip at the top and bottom in the grid; a square post loses some of its sides. Keep important content, especially text, away from the edges.

Step 1: get the photo into a usable format

iPhones save photos as HEIC by default. Convert them with HEIC to JPG if a tool will not open them. Screenshots and exports from design apps often come as PNG; for photos, JPG is the right upload format, and PNG to JPG does the conversion.

Step 2: crop to the shape

Cropping decides what the viewer sees, so do it yourself rather than letting Instagram do it.

1. Open Crop image and drop one or more photos. They open one after another.
2. Pick the ratio: 1:1 for square posts and profile pictures, 9:16 for stories and reels, 16:9 for a landscape that you will then trim to 1.91:1 in the app.
3. Drag the photo under the frame and zoom to frame the shot. The output size in pixels is shown next to the Crop button.
4. Crop, then move to the next photo, and download them all as a ZIP at the end.

The cropper has the Instagram shapes built in: 1:1 for square posts, 4:5 for portrait posts, 1.91:1 for landscape posts and 9:16 for Stories and Reels. Pick the ratio, drag and zoom the frame over the part you want, and crop. Several photos can be cropped one after another and downloaded together.

Check the pixel size before cropping. A 9:16 crop from a 4000 × 3000 photo is about 1688 × 3000, comfortably more than 1080 × 1920. A 9:16 crop from a small 1200 × 900 image leaves only about 506 × 900, which will look soft at full screen.

Step 3: resize to 1080 px wide

1. Drop the cropped photos into Resize image. Several files can be resized at once.
2. Type 1080 in the width field and clear the height field, with the aspect lock on. Every photo becomes exactly 1080 px wide with its proportions kept: a 4:5 crop becomes 1080 × 1350, a 9:16 crop becomes 1080 × 1920.
3. Download the results.

The presets do the same job in one click: Instagram square gives 1080 × 1080, Instagram portrait 1080 × 1350 and Story 1080 × 1920. With both fields filled and the lock on, the tool fits the image inside that box, so a preset only gives exact dimensions when the photo already has the matching shape: a 4:5 portrait put through the square preset comes out at 864 × 1080. Crop first, then pick the preset with the same shape, or use width 1080 with an empty height.

Do not enlarge small images past 1080. If a photo is only 800 px wide, upload it as it is; resizing up adds no detail.

Step 4: compress, lightly

Resized JPGs come out at high quality and, at 1080 px wide, usually well under 1 MB. That is fine to upload. If you transfer photos to your phone over a slow connection, or simply want smaller files, run them through Compress JPG at 80 to 85%. At 1080 px wide, the difference from the uncompressed version is not visible on a phone.

Avoid heavy compression. Instagram compresses again on upload, and artefacts from two rounds stack up, especially in skies and dark gradients.

Doing it on the phone only

You do not need a computer.

• iPhone: in Photos, Edit > Crop, choose the ratio (square, 4:5, 9:16). Instagram handles the width itself. For exact 1080 px files, open the tools on this site in Safari; the file picker gives you access to your library.
• Android: most gallery apps have Edit > Crop with fixed ratios. The same browser tools work in Chrome.
• Either: crop in the gallery, then post. If quality looks poor after posting, resize to 1080 px wide before uploading next time.

Text, stories and safe zones

Stories and Reels show the username, buttons and captions over the top and bottom of the screen. Keep text and faces out of roughly the top 250 px and the bottom 300 px of a 1080 × 1920 frame.

For reels covers, the cover is shown at 9:16 in the Reels tab but cropped to the grid shape on your profile. Put the title in the middle third so it survives both.

Text in images suffers most from recompression. Make text large, use solid colours behind it, and prefer a square or 4:5 post over a landscape one, which shows text small on a phone.

Colour shifts

Instagram shows images in sRGB. Photos exported from an editor in a wide colour space such as Display P3 or Adobe RGB can look duller or shifted after upload. When exporting from a photo editor, choose sRGB, and you see on Instagram what you saw on your screen. Phone photos posted straight from the camera roll are handled correctly.

Troubleshooting

• The photo looks soft after posting. It was probably narrower than 1080 px, or wider and resampled by the app. Resize to exactly 1080 px wide.
• Instagram crops my photo. The ratio is outside what the feed accepts: too tall for a portrait post or wider than 1.91:1. Crop it yourself first.
• Banding in skies. Compression stacked up. Upload a higher quality JPG and avoid sending the photo through a messenger before posting, which compresses it once more.
• The carousel cut off some slides. The slides had different shapes. Crop all of them to the same ratio.
• The profile picture is blurry. Upload a square image of at least 320 px, ideally larger, with the face centred.

Checklist

1. Convert HEIC or PNG photos to JPG.
2. Crop to 1:1, 4:5 or 9:16, and check the resulting pixel size.
3. Resize to 1080 px wide with the height left empty.
4. Compress lightly, if at all.
5. Keep text away from the edges and out of the story safe zones.
6. Export in sRGB from photo editors.
7. Give every carousel slide the same shape.