Why size matters

Every network crops and compresses pictures that don't match its shapes. Upload a landscape photo as a story and you get black bars or a zoomed-in crop; upload a small banner and it's stretched and blurry. Starting from the exact size means you decide what's in the frame, not the app.

The sizes here are the ones each network recommends uploading, not just the ones it displays: bigger files stay sharp on high-resolution phones and survive the network's own compression better.

Crop, fit or blurred background

Fill crops the photo to cover the whole size: best when the subject sits well inside the picture. Whole photo on a colour keeps everything and fills the gaps with a solid colour — clean for products and logos. The blurred background is the popular middle way for putting a landscape photo in a story: the photo stays whole, and the space around it is the same picture, enlarged and softened.

Safe areas and round photos

Some pictures are cropped differently on each screen. A YouTube banner shows in full on TVs but only its middle strip on phones, and stories hide the top and bottom behind the name and the reply bar. The dashed line marks the part every screen shows; keep text and faces inside it.

Profile photos are uploaded square and shown round on almost every network. The circle shows what will remain, so your face doesn't end up cut at the edges.

Common mistakes

Enlarging a small picture. Resizing up can't add detail; if the tool warns that your photo is small, look for a larger original.

Text near the edges. Captions and logos in the outer part of a story or banner are the first thing to be covered or cropped.

One picture for every network. A 4:5 post, a 9:16 story and a 16:9 thumbnail need different framings of the same idea — make one of each.

Private by design

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