Why do social platforms crop photos?
Every feed is built from boxes of fixed shapes, and a photo that does not match its box is cut to fit. A tall phone photo in a square slot loses its top and bottom; a wide landscape in a portrait slot loses its sides. When the cut is made from the center, a portrait is the one that loses the top of someone's head.
There are two honest ways out: add space so the photo already fits the box, or make the crop yourself so you decide what is lost.
How do you post a whole photo without cropping?
Pad it. Add border to image has a Pad to aspect setting that adds space along the short axis, the same amount on each side, never removing any of the photo, until it reaches the shape you pick: 1:1 for square, 4:5 for a portrait post, or 16:9 for video-shaped slots. The platform then has nothing left to cut.
- Open Add border to image and drop in the photo, or several at once. Add border to image
- Set Pad to aspect to the shape of the slot: 1:1 for a square post, 4:5 for a portrait one. The tool starts with 32 pixels of padding on every side, so set Padding to 0 first if you want bands on two sides only.
- Pick the padding color. White or black looks deliberate, and a color taken from the photo can look better still.
- Download, and post the padded photo. It arrives in exactly the shape the feed wants, with the whole picture inside it.
For a screenshot, the Screenshot beautifier does the same with a gradient background and a shadow, reaching an aspect ratio by adding padding rather than cropping.
How do you crop for each platform without losing the subject?
Sometimes a crop is what you want: a photo that fills the whole slot looks better than one with bands around it. The trick is choosing which part survives, instead of leaving it to the center. Resize image for social media takes one photo and crops it to the size each platform uses, with a nine-point focal grid that anchors every crop to the top, a corner, the middle or wherever the subject is.
- Drop in one photo and tick the placements you need. Resize image for social media
- Set the focal point on the three-by-three grid. For a portrait, Top keeps faces in frame; for a landscape with the subject at one side, choose that side.
- Check each preview, then download every size together as one ZIP.
Which sizes do the platforms use?
These are the sizes Resize image for social media crops to. Platforms change their layouts from time to time, so check a platform's own help pages before a campaign that depends on an exact size.
| Platform | Placement | Pixels | Shape |
|---|---|---|---|
| Post | 1080 × 1080 | 1:1 | |
| Portrait | 1080 × 1350 | 4:5 | |
| Story | 1080 × 1920 | 9:16 | |
| X | Post | 1600 × 900 | 16:9 |
| Post | 1200 × 630 | About 1.9:1 | |
| Post | 1200 × 627 | About 1.9:1 | |
| YouTube | Thumbnail | 1280 × 720 | 16:9 |
| Pin | 1000 × 1500 | 2:3 |
Should you pad or crop?
- Pad when every part of the picture matters: a group photo, a document, a piece of artwork, a product shot with text on it.
- Crop when the subject is compact and the edges are background: a portrait, a single object, a landscape with sky to spare.
- Never stretch. Squeezing a photo into a new shape keeps everything and makes all of it look wrong.
If the platform is going to crop anyway, cropping yourself first is still the better choice, because you see the result before anyone else does.