📤 Social Media

How to Crop Photos for Every Social Platform: The 2026 Aspect Ratio Guide

April 27, 20267 min readSocial Media

You took the perfect photo. Your pose is on point, the lighting is incredible, you look amazing. Then you upload it to Instagram and it crops your head off. Or you post to LinkedIn and it's a tiny sliver with black bars. Or Pinterest squishes it into a square.

Every platform has a preferred aspect ratio and pixel size. Post in the wrong format and the algorithm buries you, the crop ruins the composition, or the image looks pixelated. Here's the definitive guide to getting it right — plus how PoseOverlay auto-crops for you.

In This Guide

Platform-by-Platform Specs Cropping Rules of Thumb PoseOverlay Social Export

Platform-by-Platform Specs (2026)

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Instagram Feed

4:5 — 1080 × 1350 px

The tallest ratio Instagram allows in the feed without cropping. Takes up more screen real estate than 1:1 square posts, which means more engagement. This is the ratio you want for most feed posts in 2026.

📱

Instagram Stories / Reels

9:16 — 1080 × 1920 px

Full-screen vertical. Stories and Reels take over the entire phone screen, so you want edge-to-edge coverage. Leave a small margin at the top and bottom for the username and interaction buttons.

🎵

TikTok

9:16 — 1080 × 1920 px

Same as Instagram Stories/Reels. TikTok is vertical-first. Horizontal content gets penalized in the algorithm and displayed with massive black bars. Always shoot and crop vertical.

💼

1:1 — 1200 × 1200 px

LinkedIn displays images best at 1:1 square or 1.91:1 landscape. For professional headshots and personal branding, square is king. It centers cleanly and looks intentional in the feed.

📌

2:3 — 1000 × 1500 px

Pinterest is a vertical-scroll platform. Taller pins take up more space and get more saves. 2:3 is the sweet spot — tall enough to dominate without getting truncated in the feed.

🐦

X (Twitter)

16:9 — 1600 × 900 px

X displays images best in landscape. 16:9 fills the preview card without cropping. Vertical photos get center-cropped in the timeline preview, often cutting off your face. Go landscape on X.

Cropping Rules of Thumb

Shoot wider than you need. If you know you'll be cropping to multiple ratios from a single photo, leave extra space around yourself. A photo that's framed tightly for 16:9 will lose your head when cropped to 4:5. Give yourself room.

Keep your face in the center third. When a platform auto-crops, it almost always crops from the edges toward the center. If your face is centered (or slightly above center), it survives any crop.

Don't crop mid-joint. If you're cutting off part of the body, crop between joints — mid-thigh, mid-shin — not at the wrist, elbow, knee, or ankle. Cropping at a joint looks like an amputation.

Vertical for engagement, horizontal for landscape. Vertical photos take up more screen space on mobile, which means more time in view and higher engagement. The only exception is scenic travel photos where the landscape itself is the point.

PoseOverlay's Social Export Studio

We built Social Export Studio because manually cropping the same photo six times for six platforms is soul-crushing. After you capture a photo in PoseOverlay, tap Social Export from the Feature Hub and you'll see 6 platform presets — each showing a real-time preview of your photo in that exact crop.

Tap any platform to see how your photo looks at that aspect ratio. Your Pose Match score is automatically stamped on the image as a branded badge. One tap downloads the cropped version, ready to upload.

The presets are calibrated to 2026 specs: Instagram Feed at 4:5, Stories/TikTok at 9:16, LinkedIn at 1:1, Pinterest at 2:3, and X at 16:9. As platforms change their specs, we update the presets.

Try Social Export

Capture a photo in PoseOverlay, then tap Social Export. Six platform crops, one tap each. Your photo, perfectly sized for everywhere.

Open Camera — Free

Quick Reference

Bookmark this. You'll need it. Instagram Feed: 4:5 (1080×1350). Stories/Reels: 9:16 (1080×1920). TikTok: 9:16 (1080×1920). LinkedIn: 1:1 (1200×1200). Pinterest: 2:3 (1000×1500). X: 16:9 (1600×900).

Or just open PoseOverlay and let Social Export do it for you.