Hello all. You know that moment when you’ve found the perfect cover photo for your Facebook page, only to upload it and find it pixelated and blurry? Or perhaps you’ve uploaded a product listing photo to your Etsy shop and it looks okay in your shop, but as soon as you click enlarge the quality plummets? Social media image sizing is a tricky one to master. In this post, I’ve gathered all the info you’ll need to optimize your images for your social media sites, complete with a handy infographic.

Before we get started with the specifics, here are a few general tips:

1. Contrary to popular/previous belief, web images do not have to be saved at a resolution of 72 ppi (if you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it – it doesn’t matter). Web images appear the same at a variety of different ppi settings. I save my web images at 150 ppi just for fun.
2. When in doubt, save as .png file. PNG files are “lossless,” meaning they don’t compress. Saving as .png seems to be especially helpful when saving for a Facebook cover photo.
3. It’s not a bad idea to save your images (especially jpeg images) at a slightly larger image size than required. This allows for the images to be downsized slightly when viewed on smaller screens, but will still retain a high quality if viewed on a larger screen.
4. Aside from Pinterest, the social media sites mentioned in the article favour the landscape (horizontal) view, meaning shorter and wider. Of course the optimal shape for Instagram is still square, and Pinterest favours images that are portrait, meaning skinny and tall.

Without further adieu, here are the recommended image sizes for popular social media sites.

Facebook

Cover photo: 828px X 315px (save as a .png file)

Profile picture: 180px X 180px

Image post size: 2048px wide (to retain quality with fullscreen option selected)

Twitter

Header size: 1500px X 500px NOTE: This is the recommended file size as indicated by Twitter. However, it should be noted that Twitter further crops the top and bottom of the photo, so keep that in mind while choosing and cropping your image.

Profile picture: 400px X 400px

Tweeted image size: 1024px X 512px

Instagram

Post image size: 1080px X 1080px

Profile picture: 110px X 110px

Etsy

While technically not a social media site, it is super important that images in your Etsy shop be sized properly. I’ll be writing a dedicated and more thorough post on optimizing images for Etsy in the future, but for now allow this information to tide you over.

This shop featured in the example images is the shop of my friend, Dayna, from Dayna Lee Collection.  I highly recommend checking out her shop for some beautiful female-centered goods.

Listing Image: 1000px X 1000px (thumbnail will crop to a landscape version, taking a bit off the top and bottom, so crop first image accordingly)

Shop Icon: 500px X 500px

Shop banner: 760px X 100px

Pinterest

Pinned images: 735px X 1100px or more (tall/narrow)

Profile picture: 600px X 600px

And that’s it! Check out the infographic below to see all of the info in a neat little chart.

Until next time,

Amy