How to resize a photo for Instagram | Watermarkly Online App

Why do you need to resize a photo for Instagram?

These days, not only digital cameras, but also smartphones produce high-resolution images of spectacular quality. For example, iPhone13 Pro Max takes photos with an approximate resolution of 2778 x 1284 pixels. If you want to print your photo, it has to be of excellent quality and have a lot of fine details. Otherwise, it will look unsharp and unappealing, which is something people usually want to avoid. However, posting your images online is a whole different story. Every file takes up some space and, just like your computer, the Internet has a finite amount of storage. For this reason, the smaller the size of your uploaded files, the better.

It has already been mentioned that Instagram is one of the most popular apps in the world – hence, a ton of megabytes is pumped into it on a daily basis. For Instagram to be able to deal with and store such a vast amount of content, it has to automatically compress all photos and videos to make their size more manageable.

It’s an effective solution, but, unfortunately, it does cause some issues. Once the uploading process is done, your large-sized, high-resolution image might end up looking blurry, pixelated, and unprofessional with messed up color transitions. Since the compression is automatic, you won’t be able to do anything about it. You won’t even realize that your photo looks bad until it shows up on your feed.

Instagram and some other popular social media platforms have specific image size requirements. Your content has to comply with them, if you want it to look good.

The best way to make sure that the good quality of your photos will be preserved is to resize them prior to posting online. There are a lot of image editing apps – both mobile and desktop – that offer not only the cropping feature, but also allow you to enter new pixel dimensions. For Instagram, it’s a common practice to crop your photo first, then change their size. This is due to the fact that the app requires you to crop images anyway, and if you resize first, then crop, you’ll end up with images that are smaller than necessary. It’ll affect their quality in a negative way, too.

The quickest and most convenient way to resize photo for Instagram is to use our free, online app, Watermarkly. Here, you can both crop and resize your images in just a few clicks!

Our app is browser-based, hence you won’t have to spend any time downloading and installing it. We don’t have any accounts, so you won’t need to sign up or provide any personal information, either. All you have to do is open the Crop Photo webpage, upload your image, choose one of the templates, adjust the cropping area and download your processed copy. Resizing photos for Instagram can be as simple as that.

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Best Image Sizes for Instagram

Now, that you know why it’s crucial to resize your photos before posting them, let’s talk numbers. More specifically, let’s see what the best image sizes for Instagram are.

Nowadays Instagram offers three options for a feed post – square, portrait or landscape.

Instagram supports such image formats as JPG / JPEG, PNG, and BMP. In addition, it allows you to upload non-animated GIFs. However, JPEG / JPG remains to be the preferred format, hence, it might be a good idea to convert your photos into it to preserve the good quality and save up some time.

Instagram Image Sizes

Profile Photo — 110x110 pixels (1:1 aspect ratio);
Standard Post — 1080x1080 pixels (1:1 aspect ratio);
Portrait Post — 1080x1350 pixels (4:5 aspect ratio);
Landscape Post — 1080 x 608 pixels (1.91:1 aspect ratio);
Story – 1080x1920 pixels (9:16 aspect ratio);
IGTV Cover Photo — 420х654 pixels (1:1.55 aspect ratio);
Landscape Ad — 1080х566 pixels (1.91:1 aspect ratio);
Square Ad — 1080x1080 pixels(1:1 aspect ratio).

Minimum resolution for a Post Photo is 150 x150 pixels.

Maximum resolution for a Post Photo is 1920 x1080 pixels.

Maximum file size is 8MB.

Our app includes ready-made templates for Instagram story and all kinds of posts. The templates have both the required aspect ratios and pixel dimensions. All you’ll have to do is pick the right template, adjust it, then click on the “Crop Images” button.

In Watermarkly’s output settings you will also find the option of saving your processed image in the JPEG format and compressing it at the same time – this way, you will get an image that will have the right format, the right aspect ratio, the right pixel dimensions and a manageable file size. The excellent quality will be maintained, of course, and your processed copy will look just as excellent as the original.

Remember – no matter what strategies you will choose and implement to gain more attention, people won’t follow you if you have blurry and pixelated photos. Bad image quality can spoil even the most breathtaking masterpieces. Properly preparing your photos for publishing online is an important step that you should never skip. Besides, with Watermarkly, it will hardly take any time or effort.

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How to resize photos for Instagram in Watermarkly: a step-by-step guide

Our app allows you to choose a different aspect ratio and pixel dimensions for your images in under five minutes. It will take you just a few clicks to get the desired result. The free version of Watermarkly allows you to process up to 10 photos per day. Our app supports all the common image formats - JPG, PNG, BMP, WEBP, non-animated GIF, and HEIC. What’s more, the original images won’t be altered – the app will apply all the changes to copies of your files.

Watermarkly is a browser-based app, hence you will only need a stable Internet connection to use it. It’ll work on any operating system and any device – smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer.

How to resize photos for Instagram:

Open Watermarkly website, then go to the “Crop” webpage.
Drag and drop your files into the app or click on the “Select Images” button, then pick the necessary photos. You will be able to import images from your computer, Google Drive/Photos, or DropBox. Your original photos can be of any size.
Next, click on the blue arrow in the “Desired size” bar and scroll down to the ready-made templates for Instagram. Pick the template that you need.
Drag the blue dashed borders to make the cropping area bigger or smaller, while placing the cursor inside it and moving will allow you to change its position. Everything outside of the cropping area will be cropped out. You can also drag the “Angle” slider to tilt the image left or right.
Once you are happy with the result, click on “Crop Images”. This will open the export settings.
Choose the file format for your cropped images. Here, you can also add a watermark to your images as well as access the Preview section to check what your processed images will look like.
When you are done with the export settings, click on “Crop Images”.
Finally, download your cropped copies to your computer or export them to Google Photos or Dropbox.

What Instagram templates does Watermarkly offer?

Our app has four ready-made templates for Instagram:

Instagram Post – 1080 x 1080
Instagram Story – 1080 x 1920
Instagram Portrait – 1080 x 1350
Instagram Landscape – 1080 x 566

If you need to create an ad or an IG TV cover, you can also click inside the “Desired size” bar and enter the exact pixel dimensions, then adjust the cropping area.

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What formats can photos be saved in

In the export settings you can choose to keep the original format or pick a new one:

JPEG of standard/maximum quality.
Lossless PNG.
WEBP of standard quality.
Compressed JPEG.

If you select the last option, your cropped copies will be not only converted to JPEG – if they were in a different format initially – but they will also be compressed, which means they will occupy significantly less space in your memory storage. If you don’t know much about compression, you can read here: How to compress an image.

As it has already been mentioned, the free version of our app allows you to process a batch of up to 10 images. However, if you constantly need to resize a lot of photos for Instagram, you should consider buying one of our paid editions – either of them will give you the opportunity to process up to 2000 photos in one go.

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Benefits of Watermarkly

Watermarkly is extremely convenient and intuitive. It has a straightforward interface that’s very easy to navigate through. You won’t have to download anything to your device or install any plugins. With our app, resizing photos for Instagram won’t be complicated or time-consuming. You’ll just need to upload your images into the app and get started.

Advantages of Watermarkly:

It’s safe and secure

All of our tools process your files right in your browser. It means that they never leave your computer and travel to our servers. We will never be able to store your files – we won’t even get access to them in the first place. We don’t collect any personal data, and our website establishes only secure connections. If you want to use the free version, we won’t even ask you for your email address. With us, there’s absolutely no need to worry about security, safety and privacy.

It works fast

With our app, you’ll be able to resize photo for Instagram within just a few minutes. It’ll take a couple of seconds to import images. Choosing a ready-made template and adjusting the cropping area will also be simple and quick. The processing and downloading will be less than a minute long.

It’s ad-free

Even though our app is online, you won’t be distracted by annoying ads or disturbed by sudden pop-ups. You won’t have to sign up to use our app, either.

Its interface is very intuitive

To resize photo for Instagram, you don’t need to have any professional editing skills. Our app is so simple that you will master it in no time.

There’s a free version

You can resize photo for Instagram without paying a cent, if you want to process only a small batch of images. The free version of our app allows you to process up to 10 pictures at once.

We have affordable prices

All of our paid editions are affordable one-time purchases. That’s right – we don’t sell subscriptions. You purchase a license only once and use it as long as you need. More to that, one license will give you the opportunity to use all of the online tools on our website – not just to crop images, but also watermarking, compressing, resizing, etc. With the paid version you’ll be able to process batches of up to 2000 photos in one go.

If you need to resize photos for Instagram quickly and effortlessly, then Watermarkly will be the perfect choice. You will get amazing results in under 5 minutes.

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Not Only for Resizing

Watermarkly will give you the opportunity not only to resize photos for Instagram, but also make some other changes to them. You can:

Design a textual watermark and import your own logo, then add them to your photos. There is a great selection of all the necessary tools for editing.
Resize your original photos without cropping them. For example, you can downsize your high-resolution image by 20%. It's also possible to enter a new number of pixels for either height or width, or both. The aspect ratio of your image will remain unchanged.
Add multi-lined text to a single photo.
Compress images in different formats. Check out these tools: compress JPEG, compress PNG, compress GIF. This will allow you to dramatically reduce the file size of your images, while preserving their excellent quality.
Convert to JPG: PDF, PNG, HEIC, GIF, BMP and WebP.

All of our tools work independently from each other, yet you’ll be able to master each of them easily. Additionally, almost all of our apps – with the exception of one – offer batch-processing. You can import images from your device, Google Drive / Photos or Dropbox.

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FAQ

How can I upload a large-sized, high-resolution photo to Instagram without losing quality?

Unfortunately, it’s impossible. First, you will need to crop your image in the app itself. Then Instagram will automatically compress your photo, so it will occupy less space on their servers. This might result in your image looking blurry and pixelated and lose a lot of its fine details. If you want to avoid that, you should resize your photos for Instagram. You can both crop and downsize your large images in Watermarkly. Our app includes ready-made templates for all kinds of Instagram posts and stories.

Where can I find an app to resize images for Instagram?

You can use our browser-based app, Watermarkly. It will allow you not only to crop your images, but also set new pixel dimensions which will be perfect for Instagram. Since it works online, you won’t have to download or install anything. You can open the app on our website and get to resizing your photos.

Can I edit an image on Instagram after it has been posted?

Instagram allows you to edit the caption and tag someone after the post has been uploaded. However, you cannot make any changes to the images themselves. If you don’t like how your photo looks after it has been posted, you will have to take it down, change it up a bit and re-upload. It’s a common practice to crop and downsize your images for Instagram before posting them.

Is it possible to upload resized, but uncropped images to Instagram?

Technically, you can resize your photo for Instagram without cropping it. For example, you can use our Resizer to reduce the size of your image by 25% or change its pixel dimensions, then upload the resized image to Instagram. However, this platform has its specific aspect ratios – 1:1 for a standard post; 4:5 for a portrait post and 1.91:1 for a landscape post. Therefore, you will have to crop your image anyway. If you downsize your image, then crop it in Instagram’s editor, your image will be of a smaller size than you intended and might look unsharp and unappealing. For this reason, it’s better to use our Crop tool to properly optimize your images for this social network.

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