How to resize images for social media

Your photographer has done an ace job. Your copywriter has created some killer copy. And you’re ready to post on Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok. But there’s a problem. They all need different image resolutions and dimensions – none of which match yours. It's honestly the bane of any social media marketer's working day. 

Fear not. In this post, we’ll show you the different resolutions and dimensions you need for both organic and paid-for social media posts. And we’ll show you how Dash can not only resize images for social media quickly, but it can also resize images for online shopping platforms, collect and share user-generated content, and a whole lot more.

Why one image size doesn’t fit all 

Unless your image files are massive, most social media platforms will accept the wrong-sized images. But you run the risk of them being squashed, stretched, cropped or pixelated which will negatively affect your brand integrity. Plus, if they’re not optimised for that channel, they could decrease your audience engagement. 

However, making sure your social media images are all the correct size is harder said than done. Charlotte, from ecommerce brand Needle and Thread, told us that image resizing is one of the brand’s biggest challenges for nailing their social content—especially for their photographers. She says:

“We’ve learned to consider the channel before the asset. We need to be aware of the channels we’re creating assets for when we do photoshoots and videos. Designers feel the brunt of that because they have to think about the lens and camera they use. We also try to minimise the number of changes we make to our assets.”

This can be time-consuming and frustrating trying to remember exactly what channels you’re shooting for. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Read on to find out more. ✨

Social media image requirements

Let's break down each of the social channels and what image sizes they require. 👇

Facebook image dimensions and aspect ratios

• Profile picture: 170 x 170 px
• Feed, carousel and collection ads: 1080 x 1080 px, max file size is 30MB, aspect ratio 1:1, 1.91:1, aspect ratio 9:16
• Stories: 1080 x 1920 px, aspect ratio 9:16
• Cover photo: 851 x 315 px, max file size 100KB 
• Timeline posts: 1200 x 630 px

Tips:

• Facebook automatically resizes timeline and post photos to 500 pixels wide
• Its ad images have an aspect ratio tolerance of 3%

Facebook regularly updates image dimensions and recently removed many of the image sizing restrictions that came with their ads. That’s not to say there aren’t any. But it’s certainly an easier platform to work with these days.

It advises keeping text down to around 20% of the ad space and images as simple as possible. If you want to use more complex imagery, Facebook recommends using the carousel format. And you’ve got to love Facebook’s ad preview tool. This lets you check everything looks good before you click the ‘publish’ button.

Instagram image dimensions and aspect ratios

• Feed image ads: Portrait - 1080 x 1350 px, landscape - 1080 x 566 px, square - 1080 x 1080 px, aspect ratio 1:1, 1.91:1
• Stories, reels and collection ads: 1080 x 1080 px, max file size is 30MB, aspect ratio 1:1, 1.91:1, 4:5
• Profile picture: 320 x 320 px, aspect ratio 1:1 
• Page thumbnails: 161 x 161 px, max file size 100KB

Tips:

• Instagram recommends leaving 14% (250 pixels) top and bottom free of text on Instagram Stories ads
• Instagram single-image ads take up the full screen. This is good news if you’re using IG ads as single-image ads don’t have to compete for attention – for a few seconds at least.
• The Explore and Stories ads are verticle ‘skyscraper’ banners. Here you need to be sure any text on the image is properly set.

🤓 For more Instagram tips, check out our guide to Instagram ads for ecommerce brands. 

Pinterest image dimensions and aspect ratio

• Cover image: 800 x 450 px, aspect ratio 9:16
• Profile image: 165 x 165 px, aspect ratio 9:16
• Pins, carousels and ads: 1000 x 1500 px, aspect ratio 2:3, 1:1
• Shopping ads: 1000 x 1500 px, aspect ratio 2:3

Tips:

• Portrait images display better – ideally, stick to a 2:3 aspect.

Next to Instagram, Pinterest is the image lover's social platform. It’s the perfect place for brands in the home furnishing and fashion sectors. All the more reason to optimise your images for the platform with the right sizes, easy-to-read text on images and creative multi-image ‘Collections pins’.
 
🤓 Take a read of our full article about Pinterest strategies for ecommerce.

LinkedIn image dimensions and aspect ratios

• Company profile picture: 300 x 300 px
• Company cover photo: 1128 x 191 px, aspect ratio 1.91:1
• Organic posts and carousels: 1080 x 1080 px (or) 1920 x 1080 px 
• Sponsored image ads: 1200 x 1200 px, 1:1, 1.91:1, max file size is 5MB
• Blog post link images: 1200 x 627 px, aspect ratio 1:1
• Featured article: 1200 x 644 px
• Carousel ads: 1080 x 1080 px, aspect ratio 1:1, max file size is 10MB

Tips:

You can change an auto-generated URL image by clicking on it and selecting your own from your files.
Still the only platform focusing mainly on business content, LinkedIn is where B2B marketers focus a large chunk of their efforts. However, for ecommerce brands, it's still a great place to get in front of prospective customers and advertise new roles opening up in your company.

With articles, posts, carousels and sponsored content, the sheer number of options on LinkedIn makes summarising image sizes a nightmare. (More reasons to use Dash with its social media pre-sets.) We’ve tabled the most popular, but you can see a comprehensive guide at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions.

X (Twitter) image dimensions and aspect ratios

• Profile picture: 400 x 400 px, aspect ratio 1:1, max file size is 2MB 
• In-stream photos: 1600 x 900 px aspect ratio 2:1, 1:1 (desktop)
• 2:1, 3:4, 16:9 (mobile)
• Single and multi-image ads: 1200 x 1200 px, aspect ratio 1:1, 1.91:1. max file size is 5MB    
• Cover image: 1500 x 500 px 
• Card images (for posts with URLs): 120 x 120 px, aspect ratio 1:1
• Carousel ads: 800 x 800 px, aspect ratio 1:1, 1.91:1, max file size is 20MB for 2-6 image cards

Tips:

• X recognises when a post includes a URL and pulls in an image from that. website for a summary card
• GIFS appear as static images

 YouTube image dimensions and aspect ratios

• Banner images: 2048 x 1152 px, aspect ratio 9:16
• Profile picture: 800 x 800 px, aspect ratio 1:1
• Video thumbnails: 1280 x 720, aspect ratio 9:16

Tips:

• YouTube advertising is now video only – overlay ads with static images were withdrawn in April 2023.

Although YouTube is predominantly a video platform, you can upload static images as banners, profile images and thumbnail images. Banners are your brand billboard – the first thing people see when they view your channel. YouTube Studio has some helpful advice about uploading banner images. And graphic designer Louise Myers has some great tips on how to create awesome YouTube Channel Art.

TikTok image dimensions and aspect ratios

• Profile pic: 200 x 200 px, aspect ratio 1:1
• Carousel images: 1080 x 1080 px
• Single image ads: 720 x 1280 px, aspect ratio 9:16

Tips:

• Image cards can be up to 100MB.
• If you’re resizing graphics for a TikTok slideshow, use the Stories size 1080 x 1920. For text overlay, leave a 150 margin on top and bottom and 64 margin on each side.

🤓 Take a look at Barney’s post about TikTok marketing strategies.

Threads image dimensions and aspect ratios

There are few image size restrictions on Meta’s new social platform. It seems to accept all shapes and sizes. The maximum image size is 1070 x 1424, an aspect ratio of 3:4. You can upload bigger images, but they’ll be reduced to 1424 pixels high.

At the time of writing, Threads doesn’t serve ads. But we’ve been led to believe it’s adding ‘branded content tools’ to give marketers access to paid promotion opportunities. 

How to resize your images for social media

Now you’re clued up on all the different social media image size requirements, here’s how you can easily resize your images, ready to deploy to your channels.

Resizing an image (and more) using Dash

The easiest way to resize and manage your image assets is to use a digital asset management (DAM) system like Dash. That’s us. 

Dash is an online tool that lets you manage all your digital assets. As well as resizing images, it lets you store, find, share and manage all your visual content. It’s like having a team of ultra-efficient librarians filing, finding and taking good care of all your images, videos and other visual assets (like logos, brand guidelines, website graphics and more).

Using Dash, you won’t need to go hunting around for all those different social media resolutions and dimensions. That’s because Dash has pre-set download sizes for Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter already built in. Simply select the image you want to download, pick a crop size, choose your crop area and voila—your asset is ready to go out into the wild. Here’s how you could resize and crop a landscape photo into a square image, perfect for Instagram:

{% video_player "embed_player" overrideable=False, type='hsvideo2', hide_playlist=True, viral_sharing=False, embed_button=False, autoplay=False, hidden_controls=False, loop=False, muted=False, full_width=False, width='1024', height='768', player_id='130769473960', style='' %}

But that’s not all. Here are some more resizing features that’ll help you manage your visual content: 

• Batch resizing: You can also do batch resizing by selecting multiple images and choosing a single dimension. 
  
• Image conversion: You can convert different file types: for example, you can convert a PNG into a JPG, ideal if you need to optimise your images for your online store. 
  
• Set custom crops: You can set up your own custom crops for blog post cover images, email headers, website graphics—you name it. When someone in your team goes to download an image, they can select from these custom pre-sets without having to remember the dimensions they need. 

There are loads of ways you can resize your images in Dash, but don’t take just our word for it. See what Forthglade’s graphic designer, David Keefe, says about Dash’s resizing functionality. 

 “We get fewer requests now for branded graphics and logos because they’re all on Dash. People in other teams can do basic editing in Dash, like resizing graphics, so they don’t have to come through us. I’ve also noticed the briefs we get through are more specific, as everyone can see what assets we’ve already got available.” 

Dash doesn’t just help you resize images. It also has loads of other features that let you share content with your agencies, update your product listings in Shopify and collect user-generated content from your creators. 

If you’d like to learn more, read up on how Dash helps brands manage their visual content.

Resizing an image on a Mac

If you’re not quite ready for Dash, you can make simple adjustments to your images on your devices. Here’s how to resize an image on a Mac.

• Double click an image file and open it in Preview (the default app on a Mac)
• Click ‘Tools’ on the top bar menu to reveal a scroll down menu
• Click ‘Adjust size’ to see a window showing width, height and resolution of the image
• Adjust the height or width to suit

The width and height can be shown a number of ways. For precise ad sizing, make sure you choose ‘pixels’ then select the size above the minimum and below the maximum required.

Adjusting the height figure will automatically adjust the width – and vice versa. You might need to crop the image to the right ratio (e.g., 1:1) before resizing. 

Resizing an image on a PC

For Windows users, here’s a quick way to resize your images on your PC: 

• Go to the Photos app on your PC
• Double-click an image file and look for three dots at the top right corner of the image
• Click on the dots and open the scroll down menu
• Choose ‘Resize’
• Either choose one of the three pre-set sizes
• Or click on ‘Define custom dimensions at bottom of menu

This will open a window similar to the Mac’s Preview sizing window. Choose your resolution and the size you want. As with the Mac, you might need to crop the image to the right ratio (e.g., 1:1) before resizing.

Resizing an image using other tools

The market is awash with image management tools that do everything from resize and edit your image to wake you up with a decaff skinny non-dairy macchiato. (Okay. We exaggerate. But for some of the prices they charge, they should.) If you work with visual content and creative assets on a daily basis, consider whether you need something more than a simple image resizer. 

Getting your images ready for social media

Now you know how to resize your images perfectly, it’s time to send your content out into the wild. 🚀 To make the process smoother, make sure you give Dash a go. We help lots of ecommerce brands find, deploy and share their visual content to their social networks and other marketing channels including: 

• 🪴 Haws who use Dash to give their resellers access to their assets
• 🍕 Gozney who use Dash to reduce their content pipeline

 If you want to give Dash a try, you can take out a 14-day free trial – no strings attached.