Guides / Social image sizes

Social image sizes and aspect ratios

Every major social network publishes recommended pixel dimensions for posts, stories, headers, and thumbnails. Those numbers are not arbitrary: they line up with how each app lays out the feed, how much of an image is visible before someone taps, and how sharp the result looks on high-density phone screens. When you export at the wrong size, the platform scales or crops your work for you, sometimes cutting off faces, text, or logos you meant to keep.

Aspect ratio vs. pixel count

Aspect ratio is the shape of the frame: wide, square, or tall. Pixel dimensions are the width and height in pixels. A 1080×1080 square and a 1080×1350 portrait are both common for social feeds, but they frame content differently. If you start from a wide landscape photo and force it into a tall story without recomposing, you either letterbox, crop aggressively, or distort the image. MiniMagnify’s crop stage exists so you can choose what stays in frame before you download.

Feeds, stories, and banners

Feed posts usually favor ratios that match the grid, often near-square or modest portrait. Stories and short vertical video slots tend to be taller (for example 9:16 style frames), because phones are held upright. Channel or profile banners are extremely wide and short; a small logo that looks fine in a square avatar may disappear when stretched across a banner unless you design for that canvas. When in doubt, export at the platform’s documented size and preview on a real device.

Safe margins and text

Many networks overlay UI on top of imagery: profile names, buttons, and swipe hints. If you place critical text or faces at the very edge of the frame, those elements can be covered. A common practice is to keep important content inside a slightly smaller “safe” region and treat the margins as bleed. You can simulate that by zooming out slightly in the crop tool before export.

How MiniMagnify helps

MiniMagnify includes presets aligned to common social media sizes so you do not have to memorize widths and heights. Pick a preset, adjust the crop, choose JPEG, WebP, or AVIF when supported, then download a file that matches the target dimensions. Because processing runs in your browser, you can iterate quickly without uploading the same photo repeatedly to a server.

For page-weight and format tradeoffs after you have the right dimensions, see Images and web performance. Return to the app when you are ready to export.