What Size Images Should I Use?

We’ve put together our latest recommendations when creating images for your posts or for your website, to ensure the best results for images on social media.

💡 SmarterQueue will resize your large images to fit the recommended size for each network.

What Are The Optimal Image Sizes For Photo Posts And Link Previews?

If you're looking for guidance on the best image sizes for all the major social networks, as well as your website link previews, look no further.

Here are our recommendations on the most recent image size specifications for optimal results when publishing your content:

And if you're interested in how to get the best results with link previews, here are the optimal formats and resolutions to use for the images on your website:

What Image Sizes Should I Use For Facebook?

Facebook displays images consistently between desktop and mobile. You can use images that are anywhere between 2:1 ratio (wide) up to 2:3 ratio (tall) – i.e. between 1200×600 and 1200×1800.

That said, the optimal ratio to go with is 2:3, 1200×1800 pixels.

Facebook link previews can only be edited by the author of the web page you’re sharing. If the card has a large image, it will be cropped to 470×246. If you're working on your website and will be sharing links for it on Facebook, a good size to create your image would be 1200×628.

💡 Facebook may choose a random part of the image to crop into if it’s taller than this size.

What Image Sizes Should I Use For Instagram?

All Instagram posts must have a photo in order to publish them, either automatically (⚡) or via the notification workflow (🔔) with the help of the SmarterQueue Mobile App or email notifications.

Instagram feed posts with a single image can be anywhere between a 1.91:1 ratio landscape, and a 4:5 ratio portrait.

If you use images that are taller or wider than these limits we will automatically add white padding to them, in order to adapt their ratios to Instagram's specific requirements and allow you to directly publish them to your Instagram Business/Creator Profile's feed.

We recommend that you take a closer look at why we're adding white padding to your images for Instagram Single Image posts for your Feed.

Carousel posts, or posts with multiple images, have the same ratio limits as above, however, each image included in the post must have the same size/ratio. If you mix & match images with different sizes in your carousel post, then all of your images will be cropped to the size of your first photo.

Instagram story posts should be 9:16 tall (anything taller will still be published directly for Business Profiles, but cropped to 9:16), or 1.91:1 wide (anything wider will still be published directly for Business profiles, but cropped to 10:16, with black bars at the top/bottom). However, for Instagram Personal and Creator Profiles, you can add any shape of video or photo, and resize it to fit within the screen when manually publishing the story.

When you create an image or video for your story, be sure to leave a 'safe area' of approximately 160px from the top and bottom free from text, logos, or other elements as this will ultimately be covered by some of Instagram's engagement tools.

What Image Sizes Should I Use For Twitter?

Twitter can display images un-cropped on the desktop if they’re between 2:1 ratio (wide), and 1:1 ratio (square).

Images that are taller will be cropped to a square on the desktop. However, all images are cropped to 16:9 on mobile.

We recommend creating graphics with a 16:9 ratio ( 1200×675 is a good resolution to use).

Twitter cards can only be edited by the author of the web page you’re sharing. If the card has a large image, it will be cropped to 506×254. If you're working on your website and will be sharing links for it on Twitter, a good size to create your image would be 1200×628.

💡 Twitter may choose a random part of the image to crop into if it’s taller than this size.

What Image Sizes Should I Use For LinkedIn?

LinkedIn can display images un-cropped on the desktop if they’re created on a 1.91:1 ratio. The images will be displayed at 552x289 pixels.

A good resolution to use when creating graphics would be 1200 x 628.

LinkedIn link previews can only be edited by the author of the web page you’re sharing. If the card has a large image, it will be cropped to 552x289 pixels. If you're working on your website and will be sharing links for it on LinkedIn, a good size to create your image would be 1200×628.

💡 LinkedIn may choose a random part of the image to crop into if it’s taller than this size.

What Image Sizes Should I Use For Pinterest?

Pinterest's setup is portrait-oriented so vertical pins with a 2:3 ratio are ideal for their Platform. The optimal image dimension is 1000x1500 pixels.

Pins will be displayed with a width of 238 pixels with scaled height. This means that Pinterest will allow you to upload longer images as the only width is fixed.

Does SmarterQueue Resize/Shrink Images?

SmarterQueue re-saves images to make sure they are optimized for web use, so you don’t have to worry about your social network’s technical requirements.

This includes resizing any images that are wider or taller than 1920 pixels to fit within the 1920x1920 bounding box. This means that for both wide and tall images we ensure that you'll be publishing high-quality content.

Note: Images are still subject to social platforms' size limitations, so additional downsizing might still be applied when the post is published if required.

Please keep in mind that we don't reshape images between each platform. The same shape image gets published to each platform, so some cropping may occur when published in this case.