Instagram Image Size Guide

Instagram applies its own scaling and cropping to almost everything you upload, and the app does not always warn you what it will do. A photo that looks correct in your editor can come out slightly zoomed, awkwardly cropped, or softer than expected once it lands in the feed. Most of these problems disappear when you prepare images at the dimensions Instagram expects, with the important content placed where the crop will leave it alone. This guide lists those dimensions and explains the safe areas that keep your posts intact.

Why 1080 pixels is the working width

Instagram compresses uploaded images, and its display pipeline effectively works at a maximum width of 1080 pixels on the feed. Uploading an image wider than 1080 pixels gives the platform extra data to discard, which can produce slightly better quality after compression, but it will not display any larger. The practical result is that 1080 pixels is the width to design for: anything narrower may look soft when scaled up, and anything much wider mostly wastes file size. Preparing an exact 1080-pixel-wide image keeps the export predictable.

Instagram also has a lower bound worth knowing. A feed image below roughly 320 pixels wide is upscaled rather than shown at native size, which makes it visibly soft on any modern phone. Exports below 320 pixels are therefore rarely worth keeping, even for small graphics, and designing at 1080 pixels from the start removes the problem entirely.

Feed post dimensions

Feed photos are displayed in three supported aspect ratios, all of which fit within the same 1080-pixel width:

• Square post: 1080 × 1080 px, the classic format and the safest default for most content.
• Portrait post: 1080 × 1350 px, a 4:5 ratio that takes up more vertical space in the feed.
• Landscape post: 1080 × 566 px, a 1.91:1 ratio suited to wide scenes.

Instagram also accepts images between those ratios. The app will crop an out-of-range image automatically, which is why the crop preview exists: it shows exactly what will be visible. If you upload a square image to a portrait crop slot without checking, the top and bottom of the photo disappear.

Stories: 1080 × 1920 with safe zones

Stories and reels use the full vertical screen, so the canvas is 1080 by 1920 pixels at a 9:16 ratio. Unlike the feed, stories are almost never cropped; instead, interface elements are drawn on top of the image.

• The top of the frame holds the account name, close button, and progress bar, roughly the upper 250 pixels.
• The bottom holds the message field and link sticker area, roughly the lower 250 pixels or more depending on the phone.
• The camera preview already shows this, so the reliable habit is to keep text and key subjects in the central area between those bands.

A common story mistake is placing a caption at the very bottom of the canvas, where the reply field covers it on most devices. Design at 1080 by 1920 and keep interactive elements within the middle of the frame.

Reels covers

When you publish a reel, Instagram lets you choose a cover frame, and that cover appears in the profile grid and in recommendations. The cover should match the reel's vertical shape at 1080 by 1920. As with a video thumbnail, the cover is shown small in the profile grid, so text on it must be large enough to read at a fraction of the full size, and the most important part of the image should sit in the center rather than at the edges.

Profile photo

The profile picture is displayed as a small circle, currently around 110 pixels across, although you should upload a larger square for quality.

• Prepare a square image; 320 × 320 px is a safe, commonly recommended size.
• Keep the subject centered, because the circle crops the corners of the square.
• Faces and small logos should be bold enough to survive a display that is only about 110 pixels wide.

Text, crops, and the preview habit

Two rules prevent most cropping surprises. First, keep important content inside the central area of the canvas, since Instagram crops toward the center when it changes an image's ratio and adds its own UI on top in stories. Second, always read the crop and adjustment preview before posting; Instagram shows exactly what will be visible, and the difference between the preview and your original file is the honest picture of what followers will see. Text placed near edges is the most common casualty of this process, because a crop that removes five percent of an image can cut clean through a word.

Common mistakes

• Uploading a landscape photo where the feed expects portrait and losing half the subject to the auto-crop.
• Adding captions to the bottom of a story where the message field covers them.
• Designing a square cover for a reel and letting Instagram stretch or crop it into a vertical frame.
• Using a wide image as a profile picture and discovering the circle shows only the middle sliver.

Prepare Instagram images with the right tools

Because Instagram works on a small set of fixed shapes, you can prepare every file in advance. The image resizer includes presets for the formats that matter, including Instagram Post at 1080 × 1080, Story and Reels at 1080 × 1920, and YouTube Shorts where you repurpose the same vertical file, with the aspect ratio locked so nothing stretches. When a detailed PNG export is too heavy for the upload, the image compressor reduces it with a visible before-and-after comparison, and the image converter switches any file between JPG, PNG, and WEBP. The blog also covers the similar vertical formats used on TikTok if you post the same visuals to several platforms.