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How to resize and prepare pictures for posting on Instagram in Photoshop 2022


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Best Instagram settings for pictures in 2022

This tutorial will show you the best settings for preparing photos for Instagram. Learn the ideal size and shape, as well as how to resize images, how to crop pictures and the best settings for posting on Instagram. Even if you don’t use Instagram, this applies to all images you will post on social media and the web.

Right off the bat, the idea size for instagram feed is 1080px x 1350px. This is a 4X5 aspect ratio and tall. (Note, if you are posting to stories it’s 1080×1920)

best size for instagram 2022

Although you can create 1×1 square images at 1080 x 1080, which work well, there is a better option.

best shape for instagram

When you use 4×5 aspect ratio, your image will appear larger in the Instagram feed.

Fun fact: Some big pages will only feature images in this aspect ratio.

prepare photos for instagram

How to resize Photos in Photoshop for Instagram

Let’s look at 2 options for prepping images, the crop and the stretch.

Cropping an image to the right size

We are starting with a square picture for this illustration. But it really doesn’t matter, because these moves are the same for any size and shape.

Is square best for Instagram?

Choose the Crop tool

Choose W x H x Resolution (Width x Height)

Enter 1080px and 1350 px (Don’t forget the px, it tells Photoshop you are working with pixels). Because we are working on pixels, it doesn’t’ matter what you put in the resolution field. Learn about image resolution here. 

resize image in photoshop

When you add the crop tool on the page now, it will always be at the right shape. When you apply a crop, the image inside that box will be resized to 1080 x 1350. See how resizing images works here.

crop to 4x5 for social media

You can crop down to the most interesting part of a photo if you choose.

how o crop in Photoshop

Press enter to apply the crop.

Here you can see its the size we want.

resize a photo for instagram

Stretching a picture to fit a size in Photoshop

The second option is to add to the size of the picture to fill the size without cropping.

Grab the crop tool with the settings from above to fit 1080×1350

Drag the crop tool outside the image area, to crop the image larger.

streatch a photo with content aware scale

Hit enter to apply.

Now we have the right size, but it’s transparent at the top. We need to make the image taller to fit.

You could press Ctrl+T (windows) or Cmd+T (Mac) and drag up. But this stretches the people and looks really bad.

don't do this to your photo

The solution is to use Content Aware Scale.

Choose Edit>Content Aware Scale.

best way to resize

As you drag the image up, notice that the sky and sand stretch and not the people.

You can get it absolutely perfect, by telling Content aware Scale what to stretch in this simple tutorial.

fill a box with photo in photoshop

Export photo from Social Media from Photoshop

Once you are happy with the picture, let’s export it.

ChooseFile>Export>save for web

save a photo for instagram best settings

Make sure you choose jpg as this is the file format you need for Instagram.

Set quality to 75

Turn on Convert to sRGB (So the colors are consistent across the most screens).

quality setting for posting picture

If you cropped correctly the size will be 1080px x 1350px

For twitter its 1600 x 1900

Facebook recommends: 1200 x 630 (1200×1200 for carousel)

Linkedin 1200 x 627

resize in Photoshop

Check out our instagram account, and follow me for tips and tutorials as well as inspiration.

correct size for instagram in 2022

I hope you found this tutorial helpful, as always, check out the short video on top to watch the video of this tutorial.

As always, It’s great to have you here at the CAFE!

Colin

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8 responses to “How to resize and prepare pictures for posting on Instagram in Photoshop 2022”

  1. This is great but what about cropping a specific size painting? Usually standard sizes 9×12, 11×14, 12×16 and so on. You want the entire painting to be visible on its longest side and the short side falls where it will. I usually use 1080px. I used to res down to 150dpi but now leave it at 300dpi. I’m pretty sure it’s res’d down on Instagram. Correct? Looking to achieve best possible quality.

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