The Right Image Size for Every Social Network in 2026
August 30, 2026
Why "just upload it" doesn't work
Every social platform expects images at a specific size or aspect ratio for each placement: a square post, a vertical Story, a horizontal thumbnail. Upload the wrong shape and the platform will crop it for you, automatically, based on its own guess at what matters in the photo. That's how you end up with a friend's head cut off in a Story, or a product photo with the logo cropped out of a thumbnail.
The sizes that actually matter right now
A few formats cover almost everything you'll need:
- 1080×1080 (1:1) — square posts on Instagram and Facebook.
- 1080×1920 (9:16) — Instagram Stories and Reels, and TikTok.
- 1080×1350 (4:5) — Instagram's tall portrait post format, which takes up more space in the feed than a square.
- 1200×675 (16:9) — horizontal posts on Facebook and X/Twitter.
- 1280×720 (16:9) — YouTube thumbnails.
- 1200×628 (1.91:1) — LinkedIn posts and link previews.
Cropping it yourself vs. letting the platform do it
The safest approach is to crop to the exact size before you upload, centered on whatever matters most in the photo, so nothing important gets cut off by surprise. FileWizy's image resizer has one-click presets for every size above, plus a custom option if you need an exact pixel size that isn't on the list. It always crops from the center rather than stretching, so the photo never looks distorted.
One photo, several sizes
If you're posting the same photo across platforms, it's worth running it through each preset you need rather than reusing one export everywhere. A photo cropped for a square post rarely works well dropped into a 9:16 Story.