The best image sizes for social media and email

Every platform resizes and recompresses what you upload. If your image is the wrong shape, it gets cropped in ways you didn't choose. If it's far larger than needed, the platform's own compression can make it look softer than if you had resized it yourself. Uploading close to the recommended dimensions gives you the most control over how it looks.

The numbers below are common starting points. Platforms change their layouts regularly, so check the platform's help center for anything critical, such as an ad campaign.

Instagram displays images at 1080 pixels wide. Portrait posts take up the most space in the feed, which is why many creators prefer them.

For link previews, all three platforms use a wide image around 1.91:1. In-feed photos are more flexible, but sticking to common ratios avoids unexpected cropping.

Most email templates are around 600 pixels wide. To stay sharp on high-resolution screens, export images at twice the display size (about 1200 pixels wide), then compress them. Aim to keep each image under roughly 200 KB so emails load quickly on mobile data.

For attachments, size limits matter more than pixels. Gmail allows 25 MB per message and Outlook.com about 20 MB, and those limits include every attachment combined. A modern phone photo can be 3–5 MB, so a handful of unresized photos can exceed the limit.

First resize to the target dimensions, then compress. Resizing reduces how many pixels there are; compression reduces how much data each pixel uses, and doing it in that order gives the best quality at a given file size. Finally, preview the result at 100% zoom before posting.

Use JPG or WebP for photos, and PNG for graphics with text, logos, or sharp edges. For animated content, MP4 video is usually far smaller than a GIF and is accepted by every major platform.