How to do it, step by step
- Decide the shape before you shoot Set your camera to 4:5 for feed photos and 9:16 for stories and reels. Composing in the final shape beats cropping later, because cropping later always costs you something at the edges.
- Export at 1080 pixels on the short edge 1080x1350 for portrait, 1080x1080 for square, 1080x1920 for stories and reels. Anything smaller gets upscaled and looks soft; anything much larger is resized down anyway.
- Keep faces and text out of the safe-zone margins Leave roughly 250 pixels clear at the top and bottom of a story, and keep clear of the bottom 420 pixels and right 180 pixels of a reel, where captions and buttons sit.
- Set the first carousel slide deliberately Every slide inherits the aspect ratio of slide one, so upload the first image in the shape you want the whole set to be.
- Check the profile grid crop The tile on your profile is a crop of your photo, not the whole thing. Anything you need visible on the grid should sit inside the central square.
- Upload over wi-fi and check the result Instagram compresses on upload, and a weak connection produces a worse result. Open the post afterwards and confirm nothing important was cropped away.
Every Instagram size in one table
| Where it appears | Pixels | Aspect ratio | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feed photo, portrait | 1080 x 1350 | 4:5 | The largest the feed will show. Use this by default |
| Feed photo, square | 1080 x 1080 | 1:1 | Safe everywhere, smaller in the feed than 4:5 |
| Feed photo, landscape | 1080 x 566 | 1.91:1 | The smallest a feed post can look. Avoid unless the photo needs it |
| Story | 1080 x 1920 | 9:16 | Keep about 250 px clear top and bottom |
| Reel | 1080 x 1920 | 9:16 | Bottom 420 px and right 180 px carry the interface |
| Reel cover | 1080 x 1920 | 9:16 | Shown cropped to a portrait tile on your profile |
| Carousel slide | Matches slide one | 4:5, 1:1 or 1.91:1 | Every slide is fitted to the first slide's shape |
| Profile picture | 320 x 320 or larger | 1:1 | Displayed as a circle, so keep the subject centred |
| Profile grid tile | Cropped from your upload | Portrait tile | Not the full 4:5 frame. Check the crop after posting |
One number covers most of this: 1080 pixels on the short edge. Everything else is a question of shape.
Feed posts and why 4:5 wins
Instagram's feed gives a post a fixed width and a maximum height. A 4:5 portrait photo fills that maximum, so it occupies more of the screen than a square and far more than a landscape. On a phone, a 4:5 post takes up most of the visible feed while a 1.91:1 landscape is a band. More screen means more time on the post before someone scrolls past.
The practical version: shoot in 4:5 in your camera app rather than cropping to it afterwards. When you crop a 4:3 phone photo down to 4:5 you lose the sides, and whatever you framed carefully at the edges goes first. Composing in the final shape avoids that entirely.
Landscape still has a place. Wide scenery, group shots too wide to crop, and anything that will also live somewhere else. Just know what it costs in the feed.
Carousels and the first-slide rule
The rule that catches people out: every slide in a carousel is fitted to the aspect ratio of the first slide. Upload a square first and your tall portraits are cropped to square. Upload a 4:5 first and your squares get padded or cropped to fill it.
So decide the shape, set the first image to it, and make every other slide match before you upload. A carousel takes up to 20 images and video clips mixed together, and each clip is fitted the same way.
This matters most for photo dumps, where a set often comes from several cameras and several apps. There is a full walkthrough of choosing and ordering that set in how to pick photos for a photo dump.
Stories, reels and the safe zones
Stories and reels are both 1080x1920, but they are covered by different interface elements, and anything underneath is unreadable.
| Format | Covered area | What sits there |
|---|---|---|
| Story, top | About 250 px | Progress bars, your name, the time |
| Story, bottom | About 250 px | Reply box, share and like buttons |
| Reel, bottom | About 420 px | Caption, audio name, account name |
| Reel, right edge | About 180 px | Like, comment, share and more buttons |
The safe zone for a story is therefore roughly the middle 1080x1420. Faces, text and anything you want people to read belong inside it. For reels, keep the subject in the upper two thirds and left of the button column.
Two more things. Photos posted to stories are fitted rather than cropped, so a 4:5 photo appears with a background filling the rest of the screen. And a reel's cover frame is shown cropped on your profile grid, so choose a cover with the subject centred rather than one with a face at the top.
The profile grid crop
Your profile grid does not show your photos as you uploaded them. It shows a crop of each one, fitted to the tile shape, and the crop is taken from the centre. A 4:5 portrait loses a slice; a 9:16 reel cover loses a lot.
Two habits handle this. Keep the subject of any photo you care about inside the central square of the frame, which survives every grid crop the app has used. And after posting, open your profile and look, because Instagram lets you adjust the grid crop on many posts after the fact, and it takes seconds.
If you are exporting the same photo for a feed post, a story and a grid tile, ShutterAI's Every Size renders each export at the right dimensions and keeps faces inside the frame in each one, rather than centre-cropping and cutting someone's head.
Keeping the quality Instagram gives you
Instagram compresses every upload. You cannot avoid that, but you can avoid making it worse.
- Upload at 1080 pixels wide at minimum. Below that the app upscales, which is where the mushy look comes from. Uploading larger than 1080 is fine; it gets resized down, which is gentler than being scaled up.
- Do not upload a screenshot of a photo. A screenshot has already been compressed and resized once, and the second pass compounds it.
- Upload over wi-fi. On a weak connection the app has been observed to send a more heavily compressed version.
- Avoid fine grain and heavy noise at export. Compression struggles with noise more than with almost anything else, so a heavily grained photo loses more detail than a clean one.
- Keep gradients simple. Large smooth areas like skies and painted walls are where blocking artefacts show first.
Questions people ask
What is the best Instagram photo size in 2026?
1080 x 1350 pixels, the 4:5 portrait shape, for feed photos. It fills the maximum height the feed allows. Square is 1080 x 1080, and stories and reels are 1080 x 1920.
What size are Instagram stories and reels?
Both are 1080 x 1920 pixels, a 9:16 shape. Keep about 250 pixels clear at the top and bottom of a story, and stay clear of the bottom 420 pixels and right 180 pixels of a reel, where the interface sits.
Why does Instagram crop my photos on my profile grid?
The grid shows a centre crop of each post fitted to the tile shape rather than the whole frame. Keep your subject inside the central square and it survives any grid crop. Many posts also let you adjust the grid crop after posting.
Why do all my carousel photos get cropped?
Because every slide is fitted to the aspect ratio of the first slide. Set slide one to the shape you want, usually 4:5, and match the other slides to it before uploading.
Does uploading a bigger image improve Instagram quality?
Only up to a point. Instagram resizes down to about 1080 pixels wide, so uploading larger is harmless and sometimes helps, while uploading smaller than 1080 forces the app to upscale and is the main cause of soft, mushy posts.