The Instagram feed formats
Instagram’s feed shows a photo in one of three shapes: square (1:1), portrait (4:5) or landscape (about 1.91:1). Portrait takes up the most room on a phone screen, which is why it is so popular: at 1080 × 1350 pixels it fills more of the feed than a square does, so your picture gets more of the viewer’s attention while they scroll.
| Shape | Pixels | Ratio | When to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portrait | 1080 × 1350 | 4:5 | Photos of people, products and anything vertical. The most space in the feed. |
| Square | 1080 × 1080 | 1:1 | A safe default, and the shape of the profile grid’s thumbnails. |
| Landscape | 1080 × 566 | 1.91:1 | Wide scenes, panoramas, group photos. |
How to resize for a post
- Drop your photo on this page. The portrait post size is already selected, and you can switch to another variant in place.
- Choose how the picture fits: crop to the shape, or keep the whole picture with padding.
- Download and upload. Aim for the 1080-pixel width; Instagram shows feed images at that width and recompresses larger ones.
Details that decide how it looks
- Start big, finish at 1080 wide. Shrinking looks sharp; enlarging looks soft.
- Mind the profile grid. The grid shows a cropped square from the middle of each post. Keep the key part of a portrait photo centred so it does not look cut off there.
- Mixed carousels. All slides in a carousel are shown in the shape of the first one. Resize them all to the same ratio.
- Avoid text near the edges. Cropping on different screens can trim the sides.
Instagram changes its tools often, so treat these as working sizes rather than guarantees. Our Instagram photo size guide goes through every format in more detail, and the social media size chart lists the sizes for all platforms together.