Every platform wants its own pixel frame, and each one silently "fixes" images that don't fit — YouTube letterboxes, Instagram trims, LinkedIn's mobile app shows a slice of your banner you've never looked at. Here is the full dimension table for 2026, the crop math that turns any photo into any of these frames, and the format decisions that keep exports sharp.
| Placement | Pixels | Aspect | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube thumbnail | 1280×720 | 16:9 | 2MB max; under 640px wide gets rejected |
| YouTube banner | 2560×1440 | 16:9 | Only 1546×423 center is safe on every device |
| Instagram feed square | 1080×1080 | 1:1 | Safe classic; least feed real estate |
| Instagram feed portrait | 1080×1350 | 4:5 | Tallest allowed in feed — best default |
| Story / Reel | 1080×1920 | 9:16 | Top 250px and bottom 310px covered by UI |
| Facebook cover | 820×312 | 2.63:1 | Mobile crops the sides to ~640×360 |
| LinkedIn banner | 1584×396 | 4:1 | Extremely wide; keep content center-left |
| Profile photo (most platforms) | 400×400 | 1:1 | Displayed as a circle — mind the corners |
| X header | 1500×500 | 3:1 | Safe zone ~1260×420 centered |
| Pinterest pin | 1000×1500 | 2:3 | Taller pins (like 1000×2100) get cropped in feeds |
| Link preview (og:image) | 1200×630 | 1.91:1 | What Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, and iMessage show |
Dimensions match each platform's own help pages as of August 2026. The numbers change less often than people fear — Instagram has held 1080px wide since 2015 — but display crops get tweaked quietly, which is why the "watch out" column matters more than the pixel column.
Crop first, then resize. Say you shot a 4000×3000 photo (a 12MP 4:3 frame) and need an Instagram square. The biggest square inside a 4000×3000 frame is 3000×3000 — cropping to 1:1 discards 1000 pixels of width. Scaling the remaining 3000×3000 down to 1080×1080 keeps 1080 ÷ 3000 = 36% of the linear resolution, which is 12.96% of the pixels, and looks perfect because Instagram only ever displays 1080 wide.
A LinkedIn banner from the same photo is more violent: the 4:1 frame means a 3000-pixel-wide crop stands just 750 pixels tall (3000 ÷ 4). Scaled to 1584×396 you keep 27.9% of the crop's pixels. Wide frames eat vertical context, so photos with one strong horizontal band survive banners; portraits don't.
The image cropper does this sequence in one step: lock a preset, drag the crop region, download at the exact target pixels. For video cover frames, the video dimensions tool lists the matching specs, and the YouTube thumbnail size page goes deeper on the one placement that moves clicks.
The feed renders between 1.91:1 (wide) and 4:5 (tall). Outside that band, Instagram crops — and it crops centered, deciding for you which edge disappears. Panoramas and full-length portraits suffer most. Pre-cropping to 4:5 means you choose what's lost. Stories are the other trap: the frame is 1080×1920, but profile icons, the reply field, and the username bar overlay roughly the top 250 and bottom 310 pixels, so keep text and faces in the middle band.
Nothing. DPI is a print instruction — pixels per inch — and no phone or browser reads it. A 1280×720 image is 1280×720 whether its metadata says 72 or 300. The only time DPI matters is paper: at 300 DPI, that YouTube thumbnail prints 4.27 × 2.4 inches. For everything in this guide, count pixels and ignore the DPI field your export dialog keeps asking about.
topic-placement.png so your media folder stays searchable.Presets for YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Facebook, and Pinterest — exact output pixels, runs in your browser.
Image Cropper →Platforms don't negotiate: 1280×720, 1080×1350, 1584×396, 1500×500 are the frames that matter in 2026. Crop from your largest original, lock the ratio before you drag, export JPG 0.9 for photos and PNG for graphics, and respect each platform's safe zones — the UI overlays, not the pixel count, are what actually eat content. The image cropper handles the whole sequence, the thumbnail size guide covers YouTube's placement in depth, and the video dimensions calculator keeps your cover frames matched to your uploads.
1280 by 720 pixels, 16:9, at least 640 wide, under 2MB, as JPG, PNG, GIF, or WebP. That matches the player frame exactly, so nothing gets letterboxed or cropped.
1080 by 1350 pixels (4:5 portrait) takes the most vertical feed real estate of any allowed ratio, which is why most creators default to it. 1080 by 1080 square still works everywhere; the feed accepts anything between 1.91:1 landscape and 4:5 portrait.
LinkedIn banners are 1584 by 396 (4:1) and mobile apps show a narrower horizontal slice of the center. Keep logos and text inside the middle 1200 or so pixels and let the edges be background.
JPG at quality 0.9 for photos — smaller files upload faster and platforms re-compress everything anyway. PNG for graphics with sharp text, logos, or flat colors, where JPEG's blocky artifacts would show along edges.
No. Upscaling stretches existing pixels across more space; it cannot invent detail. Always start from the largest original you have and scale down to the target — downscaling preserves sharpness, upscaling softens.