Looking for all the “right” social media image sizes? Don’t fret, I’ve got you covered.
What size do my images need to be for Facebook? Twitter? Instagram?
There are countless blog posts and infographics telling you the social media image sizes you need to know. You know the biggest problem with all of them? They’re too stinking complicated!
It’s impossible to memorize every single image dimension for every single network, especially when they’re changing so often.
So I’ve come up with my own solution. A solution that has served me well, creating thousands of social media images for myself and clients alike. This solution works so well, I even use it for my fitness social media graphics business.
And it’s simple.
There are only four dimensions you need to know. That’s it. And I’m not only going to tell you what they are, I’m going to give you free templates to start with every time you create a new social media image or graphic.
Bonus: Don’t leave without downloading my free social media image templates at the end of this post!
Consider these your minimum viable blueprints— for those who want to stop wasting time and get things done.
Too Many Social Media Image Sizes
You don’t need to know what size something is when it’s viewed on every possible screen. You don’t need to know what size the thumbnail preview is. You don’t need to know the exact dimensions of a Facebook profile photo when it’s being seen on a desktop or smartphone.
You just need to get it done.
Don't waste time creating images for every possible social network size. Use these 4 templates:Click To TweetAll you need to know is what sizes work best and what networks they work best on. So here is your dead-simple guide to social media image sizes.
And P.S. if you’re looking for social media cover photo dimensions, you’ll want to view the post I have dedicated to that specifically. It’s even got its own downloadable templates!
Social Media Image Sizes
Landscape, portrait, and square. These are the only three sizes that you need to know. I have added one bonus size though, specifically for Facebook link snippets, but more on that in a minute.
Here a quick reference cheat sheet for visual image sizing:
If you would like to embed this graphic on your own site, just copy/paste the code below and it will always stay updated:
<p><a href="https://dustinstout.com/social-images/" target="_blank"><img src="https://dustinstout.com/free-resources/social-media-image-sizes-infographic.jpg" /></a></p><p>Image courtesy of <a href="https://dustinstout.com" target="_blank">Dustin W. Stout</a>.</p>
Just for good measure, here are the four social media image dimensions I use for each one of my templates:
- 1920×1080 (Landscape)
- 735×1080 (Portrait)
- 1080×1080 (Square)
- 1200×628 (Facebook specific)
To make it even easier for you, I’ve created the following downloadable blueprints for you to use as starting points for your images.
Social Media Image Templates
Simply add your email below and click the Download button. Your download link will be emailed to you immediately!
Once you download them, you’ll notice that each template has social icons on it. I’ve done this so that you can instantly know which social networks these dimensions look best on.
Bonus reading: If you’re looking specifically for Facebook image templates, you’ll want to reach my Facebook Image Sizes: Everything You Need to Know article.
My Reasoning
After going through each social network and testing out which image size looks the best, I came to a few conclusions about each.
Landscape
The landscape orientation (1920×1080) is a perfect HD quality 16:9 aspect ratio. This size works great on Google+, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn for image uploads.
This is the first and most important social media image size.
Why? Because it covers all the biggest social networks in one swoop. If you have limited time and want to be super efficient with your image creation just create this version of your image.
On Google+ if your image is high quality and landscape ratio it looks the best when expanded into the lightbox interface. If you follow my Anatomy of A Perfect Google+ Post, you’ll definitely maximize both your reach and your engagement on the platform using this image dimension.
On Facebook the landscape orientation appears in the full width of the post area covering as much horizontal space as possible.
Now, you’ll notice I’ve included a fourth template that is 1200×628. This is because Facebook has a very specific image size ratio that populates for link previews.
In order to keep from getting your images cropped in an undesirable way, and minimize the degradation of the image quality (because Facebook sucks at resizing images and maintaining quality) you’ll want to use the 1200×628 for all images destined for Facebook link snippets.
On Twitter image previews are shown in landscape with the top and bottom cropped out, so using a landscape image just makes sense.
On LinkedIn images only cover the full horizontal area when they are landscape. Otherwise, you get a big gap of space to the right of the image, making it look less significant.
Bonus tip: If you keep all your points of focus (text or primary image subject) in the square area of the template you can easily use it on Instagram as well, killing two birds with one stone. There will be some minor cropping, but if all your vital components are in the square in the center, you’re golden.
Portrait
Power users have known for quite some time that tall images work best on Pinterest. You get more real estate in the Pinterest stream, making it more visible to those scrolling through.
But why 735×1080? Good question.
Basically, Pinterest recommends images be approximately 735×1102. The 735px is the maximum width that Pinterest will ever display images at in its current user interface. The 1102px height keeps it tall enough to cover most people’s browser windows without having to scroll.
When I started creating tall images specifically for Pinterest, my Pinterest traffic went through the roof! It really works!
So why did I cut my template’s height by 22px? Another good question. You’re just full of them aren’t you?
In order to keep my workflow as streamlined as possible, I wanted to keep a base height of 1080px for all my templates. This makes it easy to copy/paste elements from one to the others with minimal resizing.
This style also seems to do relatively well on Google+. From my personal experience, this style doesn’t yield as many views or engagements on Google+ but can be a nice variant from time to time.
Square
Thanks primarily to Instagram’s size limitations the square image has become increasingly popular on social networks.
Why 1080? Since Instagram is the primary network in which square images are being used, I went by their maximum dimensions which are 1080×1080. Although they may only display a smaller, 600×600 image, their servers will keep a maximum of 1080×1080 (which you can see if you dig into their source code).
You can use square images on Google+ or Facebook as well and see decent engagement and reach. On Facebook, it doesn’t seem to matter quite as much, but I still recommend the landscape over the square due to the standard lightbox interface when you click on an image to view the larger version.
I also recommend using this size for creating profile pictures (or avatars) for your social networks as most of them use squares. While most networks don’t recommend an image this large, the higher the image quality/resolution the better I always say.
Now go create!
So take these templates and use them in your favorite image editing software as a starting point for your next set of sharable social images.
Oh, what’s that you say? You would like a recommendation of the best free image creation software available? Well, that’s awfully convenient, because I’ve covered all you could possibly need in the following:
If you have any questions about using these social media image templates, let me know in the comments below!
Wow, excellent post… This is really a great article and a great read for me. It’s my first visit to your blog and I have found it so useful and informative specially this article.
Thank you so much…
A wonderful list of cheat sheets of image sizes for social media platforms. Thank you very much for the amazing article, it is already being very useful for me!!! Thanks for the valuable information. I learned a lot from this article.
Thank you! Having all of this in one info graphic is a great find!
These are slick and excellent dude!
Glad you like them!
I tried many times to download it, but I’ve received nothing in my e-mail (it’s Gmail). What can I do to download it? (I’m Brazilian so if I wrote something wrong, I apologize)
Have you checked your Spam/Junk mail folder? If you don’t get the email it’s ether because:
I tried with my cell phone and it worked. I received the email. Thank you!
Same issue for me Dustin. I am pretty sure (as i’m a web developer) that this is a bug, not a spam/typo issue. If you view chrome dev tools console at the time that you click the Submit button, there is a 403 error and the button just says “Here we go”, without changing.
Nice post! This is a great guide for creating different social media images without changing the ratios for every single platform. I personally use square photos specifically for Instagram and orient landscape to adequately fit on other platforms. I’ll have to bookmark this post for future reference.
Awesome! So glad you found this useful. Hope you put it to great use!
I have not received the templates download in my email.
Hi Lori! Have you checked your spam?
Yes I have checked all folders I have zero email with the templates
Okay, that’s strange. It’s possible that the email form didn’t properly submit because I can’t see any submission on the backend from your email address. Maybe just try entering your email again?
Gotta love the “Landscape” template – that’s the one I use more often 🙂
Yep, definitely the most versatile.
Stoutstanding! Many thanks!
Hi Dustin,
Are the templates still current with the standard images sizes as of July 2016?
Hi Katie! Yes. And the reason is because they’re built on foundational principles rather than precise, network-specific dimensions.
I love this post, however is there an app that you know of where you can get Pinterest friendly images for bloggers? I use WordSwag for IG/fb/Twitter- but those are square friendly photos.
Thanks!
If you haven’t yet checked my post about where to find free images online then definitely give it a look. On these sites you can find very high-resolution photos which will allow you to size and crop them using design tools I mention here or here.
Thanks for this – it’ll be really useful. You’ve also saved me time experimenting!
Awesome! Glad you found it useful!
This is very helpful.. God bless 🙂
My pleasure!
Thanks for this, a real time saver!
Awesome Barry! 😀
We’ve discovered recently that if you have a lot of white space round the edge of an image, then Facebook crops it. You can get around the problem by adding a border or something close to the edge.
That’s interesting. Are you talking about when it pulls the thumbnail in through open graph or when you upload an image?
Pinterest and Facebook use the same OG coding. What size is the best for both since one is portrait and the other is landscape?
As far as I’ve tested, taller images just don’t work well on Facebook, but they perform significantly better on Pinterest. If you want to use the same image for both, I’d recommend the square.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I do all my own social media (and all my own everything) and I’ve so long been trying to figure out how to make an image that will look good across social media and these templates are exactly what I needed.
Do you plan on revisiting these occasionally, as the social media giants like to switch things up on us?
So glad to hear that Kim! You’re exactly the person I created these for. 😉
I will revisit them as needed. However, because I’ve created them to be bigger than needed, you shouldn’t need an update any time soon. These are the only three shapes that will ever be used for photographic display (unless a new social network comes along and only allows triangle photos… not likely though). The size of them all is also bigger than you actually need, so even in 5 years when everyone has upgraded to retina display (or higher resolution) they should still work just fine. By then though, you’ll be a rock star creating your own templates. 😉
Linkedin is the most tricky one. You keep updating photos with different dimensions and nothing works! You must be very lucky to get it right the first time!
fir every form factor?
Is this universal?
Yes Jason, the idea is that you should be able to use these for any digital platform use case.
This post has been really interesting for me. What RESOLUTION (ppp: pixels per inch) are you considering for all this images? Thanks!
( @ro_almonacid )
Although Ive designed them at 144dpi it doesn’t matter because each network is going to render them at the standard 72.
Bravo, Dustin. I saw this post on my Anubis (Triberr) stream and I’m glad I came over to check it out. I’ll be bookmarking it for future reference, as I tend to post several images on a few social networks.
Keep up the great work.
Thanks John! Glad you decided to click through! 😀
Large number of info-graphics pinned on my Pinterest board only about the image size. Each time I find something about, I keep them thinking someday I will go through and find out which one works perfectly.
This is one thing I now have to Pin. Easy things always stands out.
I forget to say Thanks.
Awesome! Glad you found it Pravin! And thanks for pinning it! 😀