Have Camera Will Travel - Reviews & Tips HomepageHave Camera Will Travel - Reviews & Tips

David Coleman Photography

Facebook Photos Size Guide for 2019

Ever tried using photos or graphics on your Facebook page? It can be frustrating. So here's an up-to-date, unofficial guide to what's what, what's where, and how big.

facebook_logo-ruler

Categories: Social Media
Tags:
Last updated about 2 months ago // Originally published about 2 years ago

On April 30, 2019, Facebook announced that they’re rolling out a new, cleaner design for the site. It hasn’t yet rolled out to users, but I’ll aim to update the information below when the new version goes live. Changes like these are often rolled out incrementally to users, so it’s not clear when it will be available. In the meantime, a heads up that the information below is likely to be superseded soon.

In its early days, Facebook was all about text and links. But as it has grown up, images have become more and more important. They’re now more important for design and identity on the user interface, like your profile picture or cover photo. And it’s a great way to share photos in galleries and on the timeline. Facebook photos are now a big part of the site’s appeal even as dedicated image apps like Instagram have become hugely popular as well.

If you’ve come across this page, you’ve no doubt found out for yourself that working out what image sizes to use on Facebook isn’t as easy as it could be. It involves some wrangling to get the results you want. Each type of image on a page, profile, and timeline has its own size and quirks. And Facebook never has been very good about making its help pages easy to find.

Keeping things even more frustrating interesting is that Facebook changes things from time to time, usually without any warning. Sometimes it’s a small, incremental tweak. Sometimes it’s an entire overhaul (such as when timelines were introduced and again when they were changed from two columns to one column). So it’s always a bit of a moving target. And there always seems to be a new system just around the corner.

So whether you’re using Facebook pages for social media marketing or simply trying to post photos for friends and family, here’s my freshly updated 2019 version of the unofficial guide for the sizes of Facebook photos on the various parts of the site.

I try to keep this as up-to-date as possible, but Facebook has a nasty habit of making unannounced changes and then rolling them out gradually to users so that not everyone gets them at once. If you’ve noticed something that’s changed, please let me know in the comments so I can investigate and update as necessary.

Facebook Cover Photo Size

Recommendation: Use an image that’s at least 820 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall. But if you want better quality, use an image that’s at least 1640 pixels by 720 pixels.

The Facebook Cover Photo is the large panoramic image space at the top of the timeline. It’s also sometimes called the banner image or the header photo.

Facebook Photos Header Images

The way it’s displayed varies by the size of the browser window or device screen. And not all of the image is visible on every display.

On a desktop browser, the entire width of the image is displayed. But there are thin strips from the top and bottom that are trimmed off. Each strip is 24px tall.

On the mobile app, you get the full height, but larger strips are trimmed off each side. Each of those strips are 90 pixels wide.

What that means is that there’s a safe zone in the middle of the image. Anything out of that safe zone will not be visible to at least some users some of the time. So you wouldn’t want to include some vital information like text, part of a logo, or faces in a group photo, near the edges of the image, for instance.

Here’s a visualization of what I mean. This is the original image I’ll use for illustration. Each band is precisely 25 pixels wide.

Facebook grid

Displayed in a web browser, it looks like this, with the bands trimmed at the top and bottom:

Facebook photos layout 16

In the Facebook mobile app, it looks like this, with the sides cut off instead:

Facebook photos layout 17

So what you’ll want to do is to make sure any important visual information is away from the edges of the image, at least 24 pixels from the top or bottom and at least 90 pixels from each side. So sticking within the green area of this:

Facebook cover photo safe zone

Of course, if you’re following my recommendation and uploading an image at double resolution, you’ll obviously want to double all of those dimensions.

Changing Your Facebook Cover Photo

If you’ve just set up a new Facebook profile or page and don’t yet have a cover photo, just click on the “Add a Cover” button at the top of the page where the Cover Photo will go.

Once you’ve added your photo, you can replace it easily. When you’re logged in to your account and on the Timeline view, move your mouse to the camera icon at the top left of the cover photo section. When the cursor gets over it, it will change to “Change Cover.” Clicking on that opens a drop-down menu from which you can choose the source for the new photo. This is also the same menu to use if you want to remove or reposition an existing photo.

Cover Photo Types: Single Images

In terms of types of images, panoramas are ideal. Simple crops also work, although the effectiveness is obviously going to vary based on what it’s the image. And there’s nothing stopping you from assembling multiple photos into a collage in your imaging software, saving it as a single image file, and uploading that. Like these, for example:

facebook

Facebook Photo Size Guide

Cover Slideshows: Multiple Images

Until fairly recently, it was only possible to choose one photo to act as your static cover photo. But a new feature has been added: slideshows. You can now select up to 5 photos that rotate. Access this feature through the same menu that lets you add or change the cover photo (i.e. the camera icon at the top left of the cover image section).

When you create a slideshow, you’re given the option to select up to 5 images that will be used. Use the filmstrip at the top to choose the images either from existing images or upload new ones. You can then click on the thumbnail and get a preview of how it will look in the larger space below the thumbnails. You can click and drag in that section to reposition the image in the viewport.

Facebook Photos Size Guide for 2019

You can also have a dynamically generated version that lets Facebook choose the photos based on what’s performing well and based on the activity on your page. You can turn this feature on or off using the switch at the top right of the slideshow editing screen.

Facebook Photos Size Guide for 2019

If you’re using the slideshow cover, your visitors can navigate through the slideshow using the arrows on each side or the position indicators at the bottom.

Facebook Photos Size Guide for 2019

There are two things that I find odd about the way the slideshows currently display to visitors. The first is that the slideshow doesn’t advance automatically. So to see more than one image in the slideshow, your visitors will have to know to manually advance through. I suspect only a very small percentage will do so. The second thing is that if you turn off the option for Facebook choosing the images, it displays the images in the same order every time rather than randomly. The upshot of both of these things is that, at least in how it’s currently implemented, the vast majority of your page’s visitors are likely to only ever see the first image.

Cover Videos

You can now also use video files for your banner area. They must be between 20 and 90 seconds and measure at least 820 by 312 pixels. The recommended size is 820 by 462.

If you’re shooting a video clip for this using a camera that lets you choose the video resolution, the 720p mode would be a good place to start because that measures 1280 by 720, which comfortably has enough resolution.

I have more detailed guide on Facebook video covers separately.

Facebook Profile Picture

The Profile Picture is to the left of the cover photo in the web browser display. It used to be a square, but it’s now a circle on the desktop version while still a square in the mobile app. It has a thin white line around it that’s applied automatically.

Facebook Photos Header Images

Whatever shape the image is that you upload, it will be cropped to a circle. It displays at 172 pixels diameter in a web browser and much smaller in the mobile app.

When up select a photo to add a profile picture, you’ll get the option to move the focus around (assuming it’s not square) as well as zoom in and out (so long as it exceeds the minimum resolution).

When you’re logged in, click on the small camera icon at the bottom right of the profile picture–as you hover it will overlay to a “change image” link.

Tip: If you find that your resulting profile picture, after it’s downsized in Facebook, is blurry, try uploading an image twice the size of the downsized image (that is, an image that is 344px by 344px). I’ve found that in many instances that can give a sharper result.

Profile Picture on the Timeline

The profile image that appears next to your name on comments and posts is the same image and is still a circle, but it’s automatically scaled down to 40px by 40px.

Facebook photos layout 20

Shared Link Thumbnails

The thumbnails for shared links display in a web browser at 500 pixels wide and 261 pixels tall.

Facebook photos layout 19

For a while, it was possible to choose a different shared link image, but that feature has been removed. For now, at least, there is a workaround if you share the links using a social media management service such as Buffer, but you can can’t choose a different image to use from within Facebook anymore.

If you’re sharing links from your own site, it is possible to specify which image you want to use as the image thumbnail, but that’s something that you’ll need to set up on your site and is beyond the scope of this post. But if you’re looking for what terms to Google on this, what you’re trying to do is set the “og:image” property in the page’s Open Graph metadata. Here’s Facebook’s documentation, and if you’re using a CMS like WordPress for your site there are plugins that can handle it for you.

What you can do still is add more thumbnails that are in addition to the original (not in place). When you go to share a link, use the bottom section of the popup to add more images. But you can’t deselect the original image anymore like you used to be able to.

Facebook link thumbnails 2

Photos on the Timeline

The size and layouts of thumbnails on the timeline varies according to how many images you’re sharing in the same post as well as what orientation specific images have.

Single Photo on the Timeline

When you upload an image to the timeline, a thumbnail is generated automatically to fit within a box that is 500px wide and up to 750px tall. So if you want to use the maximum space available, upload an image in portrait orientation (vertical) that is in the ratio of 3:2. This is an example of using the maximum available space:

Facebook Timeline Photo Maximum Space

If you upload a landscape (horizontal) image, it will be scaled to 500px wide and retain its shape. The full area of the image appears without any cropping.

Facebook Timeline Photo Single Landscape

This is another rectangle in landscape orientation, but it’s a much narrower aspect ratio like a banner or panorama. The width is again 500px and the image is scaled so that the entire image area appears.

Facebook Timeline Photo panorama

If you upload that same image rotated 90 degrees, so that it’s tall rather than wide, it will be cropped to the maximum available area of 500px by 750px.

Facebook Timeline Photo Maximum Space

And if you upload a square, the whole image will be displayed, with the width at 500px.

Facebook Timeline Photo Square

Posting Multiple Images at Once to a Page’s Timeline

You can upload multiple photos at once to the timeline. How they’re displayed depends on how many images you’re uploading and the orientation of what I will call the primary image.

The primary image is what I’m calling the one that displays first in the uploading popup, and it also displays larger in some of the layouts. So far as I know, there’s not an official name for it, but I’m going to go ahead and use “primary image.” So that’s what I’m referring to in the section below.

As well as displaying first, the primary image has another important role. It determines the layout you get. If you upload 3 images with a square primary image you’ll end up with a different layout than if you upload 3 images with a rectangular primary image.

The easiest way to select which image serves as the primary image is to drag it to the left in the upload dialog.

Here’s an example of what I mean. In this one, I’m uploading two images, an orange square and a green vertical rectangle. If the orange square is in the first position in the upload dialog, like this:

Facebook photos layout 1

it posts like this:

Facebook photos layout 2

Uploading exactly the same two images but reversing them, so that the vertical rectangle is first, like this:

Facebook photos layout 3

displays like this:

Facebook photos layout 4

The same principle applies if you’re uploading two, three, or four images–the layout will always take its cue from the primary image.

2 Images With Horizontal (Landscape) Primary Image

The full width becomes 500px and each of them is cropped to 249px, with a 2px white gap between them.

Facebook photos layout 5

2 Images With Vertical (Portrait) Primary Image

Facebook photos layout 6

2 Images With Square Primary Image

Facebook photos layout 7

3 Images With Horizontal (Landscape) Primary Image

Facebook photos layout 10

Because the layout takes its cue from the primary image, you can mix and match the orientations of the non-primary images–they’ll still display the same.

3 Images With Vertical (Portrait) Primary Image

Facebook photos layout 9

3 Images With Square Primary Image

Facebook photos layout 11

4 or More Images with a Horizontal (Landscape) Primary Image

Facebook photos layout 12

You can mix and match the orientations of the non-primary images–they’ll still display the same.

If you upload 5 images or more, it displays only the first 4 images but will add an overlay to the bottom right thumbnail with the number of images that are not displayed (eg. +2 or +4, etc). Like this:

Facebook photos layout 13

4 or More Images with a Vertical (Portrait) Primary Image

Facebook photos layout 14

4 or More Images with a Square Primary Image

Facebook photos layout 15

Full-Width Photos on Facebook’s Timeline

Yes, they were cool. The image spanned both columns. But Facebook did away with them in their redesign in mid-2014. Your updates now only show in a single column, and there’s no way to make photos wider than that column.

Event Header Images

No matter what shape image you upload as a header image for an even post, it’ll be cropped to an aspect ratio of 16:9. For best results, upload an image that’s 1920 by 1080 pixels. But something to watch out for is that in the main event view it’s scaled down quite a lot, so don’t use fonts that are too small (people can click on the image to open a larger version, but not everyone is going to do that).

When it’s displayed on the main event page it’s scaled to 500 by 262 pixels, like this:

Facebook photos layout 21

Facebook Image Quality Issues

Something to be aware of is that Facebook compresses some images pretty aggressively when you upload and display them.

It makes sense–naturally, they want to speed page loads and reduce bandwidth by applying as much compression as they can get away with. I’m not the only one to wish they’d be less aggressive with their compression, but how noticeable it is will depend on whether things like the range of colors in your image and amount of detail in your photo.

In the examples above, the JPG compression is far more noticeable in the montage version than in the Sydney Harbour Bridge version. I set the quality and sharpening settings the same for each in the originals before they were uploaded. Some users have reported that images with lots of reds and oranges seem to show the effects of the compression more than ones with blues and greens, but it depends on the actual image.

It also seems to depend on what kind of image you’re displaying. Photo gallery images seem to have less compression applied in displaying than do design elements like the cover photo and profile picture.

There are some things you can do in prepping the images before uploading that can help reduce the chances that your image will come out looking crappy.

Upload images that are 99KB or less in filesize. Facebook should leave images less than that untouched, which gives you control over how the compression is applied.

Upload images that don’t have a lot of compression already applied. For JPGs, for example, try keeping the quality setting at 80 or above–Facebook is going to compress it again anyway. If you’re using software that factors in colorspace (like Lightroom or Photoshop), use sRGB colorspace. And uploading images that are already resized to close to or at the target display size and not overly sharpened seems to work well.

If none of these work, take a look at my post on how to get sharp text on Facebook images.

Getting Fuzzy Text, Logos, or Watermarks on Images?

If you’re including text, a logo, or watermark and finding that it’s ending up fuzzy and unclear due to the JPG artifacts, I’ve got a separate post detailing how to fix it: How to get sharp text on Facebook images.

Image Metadata on Facebook

While not specifically related to image sizes, it is worth knowing that Facebook strips out all metadata from your images. That includes all GPS, camera type, and other data that your camera might embed, as well as anything like keywords or copyright information you might have added. (An exception is if you’re in Germany).

Facebook Photos Cheat Sheet

WidthHeightNotes
Cover Photo / Cover Slideshow820px360px
Profile Picture in Header172px172pxMust be at least 180px by 180px
Profile Picture on Timeline40px40pxSame image as main Profile Picture, automatically downscaled
Shared Link Thumbnail500px261pxOnly for single thumbnails. Multiple thumbnails are cropped.
Uploaded Timeline Photo Thumbnail500px max750px maxSee exceptions above for multiple images.
Event Header Image500px262px16:9 aspect ratio only. For best results, upload 1920 x 1080 px image.

Get Updates by Email

Get my latest reviews and tips delivered right to your inbox.

You can unsubscibe anytime and find the privacy policy here.

Comments

  2. First, FB dropped the ability to crop photos in a post, now it has to be done before uploading to FB. I HATE IT!

    But now, I can’t even preview my cover page and slide the picture around or crop before posting it! My profile picture cuts off half the image and I no longer can slide the photo to adjust around it.

    Can you please help with this?

    Reply

  3. I’ve been trying to find the best resolution to post images in my groups. Posting images in groups seems to be more strict, when it comes to resolution, then posting on a timeline. I tend to adjust my image sizes to 2048 px width and in portrait orientation(based on previous, outdated forums). It’s also difficult to find info on group image resolution postings. Help me…you’re my only hope.

    Thanks for your time,
    Ryan

    Reply

  4. Hi:

    Just wondering why FB has recently changed the Fullscreen mode size – when uploading a 16×9 pic you could select Full Screen and just the pic was displayed. Now the text box on the side is also displayed. Anyway around this?

    Cheers,
    Andy

    Reply

      • 16×9 full screen mode, still the text box on the right side is also displayed, annoying as we can see the text in the timeline already … full screen mode is waste now, to see the photo still full screen now you must right-click the photo, open in tab and press F11 … rather cumbersome !
        You would look into it since February 23 2019 … no change yet

        Reply

  5. Hello Davaid
    Thank you for your efforts
    How can i choose squre primary pic view when I upload 4 pictures?
    Some times it showed as square but other time is not! How can i control this?

    Much appreciated

    Reply

    • It’s working consistently for me so long as the first image at far left is a true square. You can reorder as part of the upload process by dragging and dropping to change the order. If it’s not that, I’m not sure–I’m not able to replicate myself.

      Reply

  6. Hi David,

    I was wondering if you knew the picture size dimensions for when you’re doing an FB audio recording?
    The default is a circle picture of your profile BUT you can add a picture of your choice, do you know the dimensions?

    Thanks
    Yvonne

    Reply

  7. Hi, why is it that no matter what size of image I upload to the Group cover window, FB stretches it beyond the dimensions of the window image area? I have inspected the image size window and it appears to be 820px wide by 428px high, uploaded an image by that size and it still shows up stretched beyond the cover window dimensions on all sides. Please help. Thanks.

    Reply

    • Same with me, on desktop view (looking at it from the phone) fb keep stretching the image wider. Very annoying, I gave up on it.

      Reply

  8. Most recently, Facebook has changed profile thumbnails from square to circular. I know that if you attempt to change your picture via smartphone, you will be required to crop both the thumbnail, and the picture itself. However, by changing it from a desktop or laptop, you can skip the cropping for the actual picture. The issue I’m running into isn’t so much the fact that you have to crop the thumbnail, but rather that Facebook won’t allow you reposition the crop. I have an image I’d like to use but since I can’t choose how to position the crop window one of my eyes get’s cut off, so it looks kinda weird. I tried zooming the window but I just can’t get anything that doesn’t do the same. If I could position it differently it wouldn’t be an issue. Is there any way around this other than meticulously playing around with the image until it aligns right? Sorry for the long response but it’s annoying when changes like this are made but it makes something simple more difficult

    Reply

  9. Hi David, I took the same panorama on an iPhone 7 and on a Canon EOS 750D stitched together using Panorama Stitcher Mini on a Mac. The iPhone picture I can display on Facebook in wide screen by turning off the 360 view but with the Canon picture Facebook crops it to 3:2 when I turn the 360 off. What can I do to display as a panorama?

    Reply

    • Off the top of my head, it sounds like FB is getting confused by the aspect ratio. Things worth trying would be to crop the Canon version’s height to make narrower and see if that makes a difference.

      Reply

      • Thanks David, it is at 6.25:1 (20,513 x 3282), whereas the iPhone one is 4.3:1 (16,378 x 3810), so its already wider and shallower than the iPhone one.

        Reply

  10. Hi,

    As of yesterday (Oct 2018)… when I upload i.e. 7 photos to timeline, it will show all 7.. one larger, rest smaller. What I have issue with: the first image in the past was always the ‘larger, featured’ image. However that has now changed. It looks as if Facebook makes the image with more interaction be the bigger image now. So, that might be the last photo out my upload, as it it the punch line! And that, frankly, destroys any option to have a final punch line, tell a story, keep focus on what I wish when people see the post!

    I really, really, really do not like this. And worst, it is not even only applied to new posts, but to all past posts as well! Completely takes away posts put together for an intended purpose.

    Do you have any work-around or way to turn-this-off so to speak??

    Thank you for any help or hints!

    Reply

  12. Thanks for this update. I’m noticing that my previously-crisp images are being pixelated and stretched in the Facebook photo galleries. They look terrible and I end up deleting a lot of them. What are the best dimensions of pixel counts less likely to be mutilated by Facebook’s own compression algorithm? I’m displaying concert photos–up to 20 of them in photo posts or galleries on Facebook. They look great on Twitter.

    Reply

  13. This is so helpful! I help run the facebook for my workplace work, so while my personal business page is pretty easy to run and I don’t really care what it looks like, the business one posts a lot more varied stuff and sometimes I get frustrated with the way facebook arbitrarily decides how to resize, preview and display the photos or thumbnails I am trying to use.

    My question is, other than sizing the photo ahead of time to match what it will try to resize it to anyway, is there any way to predict how it will actually post (orientation, center point, etc) if you don’t?

    Like today, for a vertical image, it previewed horizontal. For a horizontal image, it previewed vertical! For a square, it previewed square and then POSTED horizontal. WHY, FACEBOOK, WHY.

    It’s obviously very frustrating to try to fix one problem, and then for facebook’s engines or programming to create a totally new one arbitrarily, to not even post what the preview showed you, and to not allow much editing or changing after the fact. I remember being able to move an image around and crop and zoom it exactly how you wanted in the window that was available, but all of those options are gone now. Does facebook WANT it to be unintuitive and difficult? What’s the upside for them when it comes to frustrating their users and making marketing on their website so difficult for those of us who are familiar with technology, let alone their huge base of users who are NOT technically savvy?

    Reply

  14. Pro tip: design at the recommended size, export your Facbook images twice as large.
    On desktop it may seem quite okay, but when you see it on your phone you will start crying.
    That’s because phones have way more pixels per inch. Square images look best at 1080px x 1080px @ 72dpi. 72 dpi is the best to design in, because your pc screen uses that pixel density.
    Oh, and by the way. Texts looks really crappy, really fast in jpg format. USE PNG. VERY IMPORTANT.

    Reply

    • I read some article that stated that the proper dimensions for Facebook photo albums are 960px X 720px. Is this correct? I believe Facebook compresses the images when they “process” it.

      Reply

  15. This is my go-to website for image dimensions for social sites. Thanks for keeping us all up to date!

    Reply

  16. Hello, could you please help me with a problem?
    I added photos in a facebook page album and wrote captions on each photo. The thing is that once you click on the picture in the album, the moment it appears on a black backround you can read the begining of the caption in white with “see more” button in the end. If i press “see more” all caption disappears instead of appearing over the picture in white. So there is no way I can read the captions of pictures unless they are shared on the timeline with a post text that is the same one again. What am I doing wrong?

    Thank you!

    Reply

  17. My concern is with photos I post as comments to photos. I have no control over orientation and they will rotate to landscape regardless of the uploaded photo’s position. Thanks.

    Reply

  18. Hi. I have an old junior high school newspaper that I took photos of on my iPhone and wanted to share them with friends on Facebook. The original images show the text very crisp and clear, but when downloaded onto Facebook the text looks fuzzy. I’ve tried altering the image resolution, but nothing helps make it look like the original image. Can you help??

    Reply

  19. Hello David,
    A friend of mine alerted me to this issue today. The FB cover photos are for some reason not taking the 815×215 sized cover photos. We both use our laptops..on our cell phones, the images appear to be fine! I have viewed other cover photos in other groups where this has happened, some are off where others are fine! Are you aware of any updates or changes that FB is or has made? Thank you!

    Reply

  21. your site is good and useful.
    I will be happy if you can solve my problem. System I am using is HP Windows 10.When I publish photo (from my photos Library) on Facebook timeline the photo become gigantic no matter on photo size.

    Reply

    • Not sure off-hand why it would be doing that. Have you tried viewing the results in different browsers? In theory, the browser’s style sheet when you go to view the timeline should scale the photo appropriately.

      Reply

  22. Just want to thank you for this valuable information. I was searching and searching for the dimensions for images on Facebook and came across the information on your site.
    Thanks again,
    Wishing you the best,
    http://www.otfeed.com

    Reply

  23. Thank you for this guide. I appreaciate the methodical way you went about this and the information is really helpful. I wll refer back to it again and I see some other posts you have written that I need to check out as well.

    Reply

  24. I used to create an album and add as much photos as I want not just 30 photos !! And when i add more photos to the album the next day it shows on my friend’s timeline that I added that amount on photos to the album so they show as a single post at the end. All the comment and likes i get shows under the album but bow i dunno what happened i crratrd a new album but i am bot able to add more than 30 photos at once and when i add new photos to the album they show as a new post as well !! Does any1 knows how to add more photos to an album eithout postibg a new post

    Reply

  25. Hi, I run an online newspaper & classifieds site and I have some promotional images that I had been making that were 600px wide x 315px tall. They used to display great, but since May they no longer fit in the news feeds, they now seem to be both a little too tall and too wide. I even tried scaling them to your suggested size of 262 x 500 and this didn’t help either as they are still too big to fit in the news feed area. Any help would be truly appreciated. I believe that 600 x 315 was a standard Facebook pic size, if you could tell me what images of that size have been changed to, that would be great.

    Reply

    • Do you have an example? From what I see on your feed, most of them are shared links with thumbnails that are still displaying at 476×249 (that’s the same aspect ratio as 600×315). I see one new shared link that is displaying slightly differently for some reason–did you do anything different when posting that one? I’ve just test on my own now and when doing it in this order–posting the URL then replacing the link thumbnail–it’s still displaying at 476×249.

      Reply

  26. Hi.
    Any suggestions how to make a viral image like this work on Facebook?
    I downloaded this photo and found out it was 419×960. Made my own with the same sizes but Facebook decided to view the bottom, not the top.

    Reply

  27. I am an artist & will create albums for my work. Must my album photos correspond to the Timeline photo stats you have presented? (No, I didn’t read Every post to see if you answered this.) Thanks.

    Reply

    • You can post pretty much any size you like, especially with album photos. The guidelines are simply for how they’ll display on desktop browsers to fit in Facebook’s interface.

      Reply

      • I’ve been uploading photos in Facebook’s gallery and sizing them 960px X 720px. That seems about right, but it’s still off. I wish Facebook would just tell us what the best sizes are and put it where we can find it easily.

        Reply

  28. Sorry you’re being inundated with all of these comments! I see that you’ve updated this post two weeks ago, but I’m wondering if FB has made changes once again. I shared a link to my Facebook Page and the text on the photo was cut off at the top. I used the recommended dimensions to custom-create a design in Canva, and then used Social Warfare to set the image. It seems like the only safe thing to do now is to share an image without text, unfortunately.

    Reply

    • Unfortunately it’s impossible to ever rule out that they’ve made changes, and they typically roll them out gradually so that not all users see the same thing at exactly the same time. So it’s hard to say for sure. That said, I tested on my pages just now and it’s still working normally for me with these dimensions. I’m also sharing a link from a post where the social media image is set with Social Warfare.

      Reply

  29. Hi David,

    Excellent guide, however I noticed that if you choose aesthetically pleasing display, for example the 476 with 3 157 on bottom, when clicked on images, they are still 157 on the pop up zoom…

    So it seems there is no way to both get a nice display with uncropped images AND a pop up of adequate dimensions?

    Reply

  30. Article says it was updated 21 hours ago, but images we’re uploading to our company timeline at 714×476 are getting the bottoms cut off. Any chance the specs have changed in the last day?

    Reply

      • 714 x 476 wont work. I got a photo 530px x 880px and as mentioned above I reduced it to the ratio 3 : 2 or 300px x 450px and still it won’t fit. After uploading the uploaded image size didnt change at all compared to the original and the reduced size.

        Reply

    • Done. They’re cropped to 16:9 aspect ratio and displayed at 500 x 262 px. For best results, upload an image that’s 1920 by 1080 px and make sure fonts aren’t too small when scaled down for display.

      Reply

  32. Thanks for your informative post. But I need one help please, in my facebook page shop section I have added several photos resolution 1582*2048. But, I can see the header and the footer of the photos are invisible. I tried the editor option. Also tried to resize the photos with other edit options but that is still unchanged. Can you tell me what should be the actual site of shop section images?

    Regards
    Sohorab

    Reply

  33. I have a related question which your article does not seem to cover. I frequently upload pictures I took into albums and most of the times when I then view them on FB by visiting an album and clicking through the pics or even viewing single pictures full-size the quality is pretty bad.

    I reckon that is because FB resizes or compresses images that are too big? But what is too big? I have now started resizing all my pics to be within 160×1200 px but am still having the problem.

    Is there a maximum size for an image so that if I keep my picture below that size FB does not resize or compress it?
    My aim is to show of my beautiful pictures without FB messing with them so if there is a specific pixel or KB size I need to respect please let me know.

    Reply

    • There isn’t one facebook was giving users a tightrope of fair to good optimisation that has now been cut.. no matter what you do clarity and sharpness have become a thing of the past.. facebook is no longer a viable platform for professional graphic designers or photographers.. Saame.. not even 100k or 60k goes without the chop!!!

      Reply

  34. I would like to ask about the photos at Facebook Note but not the cover photo. I add some photos on the note(not the cover photo) but here these photos appear differently according to the devices, the worst thing is that one can zoom in or zoom out on one device, but on different phones or tablets, these function is disabled. Please kindly help me with this issue. Thanks

    Reply

  35. Hello, this is very helpful information, thank you. Can you please tell me what the image size should be for posting jobs (on company page)? Being that posting jobs is such a new feature on Facebook, I’m not having any luck finding the information as of yet. Thanks in advance.

    Reply

  37. The new facebook gigantic size is crap,and it needs to be returned to how it was as soon as possible

    Reply

  38. I’m having the exact opposite problem of FB zooming. I’ve created a png that is exactly the right aspect ratio, but it loads in too small with white space all around it. FB will not zoom in to make the photo fit the space. I’ve tried large photos, small KB, tried different browsers, everything I can think of. Then I tried any old photo and sure enough FB zoomed in.

    The banner was created in Illustrator and turned into a png. Do you have any idea what I may have done that is stopping FB from zooming in. Thanks.

    Reply

  40. Dear Sir,
    I will be happy if you can solve my problem. System I am using is HP Windows 10.When I publish photo (from my photos Library) on Facebook timeline the photo become gigantic no matter on photo size.

    Reply

    • Sorry, but I’ve not run into that issue and am not sure what would be causing it. It might be the browser doing it, in which case some things worth trying are clearing the browser cache and reloading the page or opening the page with another browser.

      Reply

      • I’m suddenly (as of today) having the same issue. I use Google Chrome, but tried FireFox and Internet Explorer, and it still looks the same. It used to be that as long as I made images 350 pixels wide, they would post as 350 pixels wide, but now no matter what size I post, they’re all huge (fill the whole space) and distorted.

        Reply

        • I noticed this yesterday. Every picture on my timeline is now gigantic and I haven’t done anything differently.

        • I have the same issue – I am an admin on a page and each day put up a new post with photo. The photos are provided to me, and come from different sources so are different sizes. In the past couple of days they have been huge no matter what, whereas before a small photo was a small photo! I hope this can be fixed, as it looks awful.

        • Same w/me & I’m trying to sell beautiful hand-made (by ME) jewelry on sale groups. I can’t begin to describe how hideous; distorted; grainy; 10 X the size…etc., my photos look. They use to be perfect pics! I’ve tried EVERYTHING…pls help!

        • Same problem. used to be able to add a thumbnail pic to an ongoing weekly post. They always retained their original size until recently and now they are blown up way too big & ugly!

    • any dimensions for the brand new EVENT covers??
      why do they keep arbitrarily changing sizes????????? AAAARGH.
      facebook sometimes demonstrates zero respect for users…

      Reply

        • If Facebok would stop changing the dimensions every other week,
          That would be great.
          What’s the bloody point, really. It’s not like it does anything else than annoy us who have to design sh!t to post up there lol. x
          In another words, w-t-f and which are the dimensions? :))

  41. Wow thank you author for this lovely and informative post. I was looking this kind of information on google and after that i saw your website top position and after i checked full article about facebook post and i would say with the help of your post i can create different facebook post, cover photos, profile photo and multiple share images size easily. Please share this kinds of informative post timely.

    Reply

  43. Such a great ressource ! Thanks!
    It would be great if you could update it regularly!
    The distributions of images have changed for Pages regarding to traditionnal accounts.
    And now you have several templates for Pages.
    And for Profile pages, it would be great if you could measure the distances regarding the inclusion of avatar photo inside the cover photo.

    Reply

  44. I’ve been trying to adjust my cover photo on Facebook for about a week now and include a custom photo. After reading this post, I finally understand what needs to be done to update the main photo. In addition to that, I know what the best size is to use for this specific spot. Having traveled to a number of cities (my favorite being Chicago this year), I want to add a header that displays my adventures. Incorporating that collage app is going to make my cover photo look super sick!Thanks for the tip!

    Reply

  48. Thanks. A very useful article.
    My problem was the same as Lisa’s – I want to post a small photo that won’t take up the whole width, about the size of a sticker. Very sad to find it can’t be done, but at least I can stop trying.
    It’s there any easy way to use your own image as a sticker?

    Reply

  49. On my website, I would like to automatically display facebook profile pic of anyone already logged in Facebook.
    Is there anyone who knows where to look for a code that works apart from facebook documentation that is not so helpful ..

    Reply

  51. Providing images on Facebook has got to be one of the most frustrating aspects of promoting my site on Social Media I’ve experienced in the last few years. Seriously?? Why do they make it so goofy? My biggest problem hasn’t been the size of the thumbnail, but where it is cropped. I’ve tried a few third-party solutions but these don’t always work either.

    Reply

  52. The Facebook Photos Cheat Sheet table at the end of the article needs to be corrected for Cover Photo width. Should be 828 according to article.

    Reply

  55. THANK YOU for this!!! Such a great help, now I can make my photos look a whole lot better on Fb without guessing about the size!

    Reply

  56. Does anyone know why the design of three pictures added in one post to a Facebook site is different from the design of the same three pictures posted on a private profile? In my opinion the site design is not pretty, because none of the three pictures is shown completely…

    Reply

  57. I would like to be able to re-position my cover photo which you cannot do if it’s 828×315

    Please provide the LARGEST dimensions for a cover pohoto

    Thanks

    Reply

    • You can upload an image that’s much bigger without any problems. So if you like you can just upload the original or the largest you have available.

      Reply

    • When you create an event on Facebook, you have the ability to add a cover photo for the Facebook event page. This is an important step to take because the event cover photo will be used where ever you are trying to promote your event. It is recommended that you create your Facebook event cover photo to 784 x 295 pixels to eliminate any undesirable resizing or cropping.

      An image sized to 851 x 315 pixels, the same dimensions as a Personal Cover photo, will also work as it has a near identical aspect ratio (~2.7:1). It will simply be scaled down proportionally to fit the 784 x 295 pixel event cover photo container.

      The Facebook event cover photo will appear on a personal timeline as 470 x 174 pixels.

      Reply

  58. I was recommended this website via my cousin. I am now not positive whether this post is written by means of him as nobody else understand such distinct about my problem. You’re wonderful! Thank you!

    Reply

  59. I’ve tried everything I can think of, but I’m still learning to use this laptop. I’m trying to upload a photo from my pic folder to facebook but it keeps saying it’s to small that I need 180 pixel width, can you help?

    Reply

    • If your pic is too small, you need to resize it to dimensions that work for Fb. I use pcimonkey.com to adjust and resize pics. You can go the the website, Click Open at the top to choose the photo you are trying to upload. Then scroll down to the bottom and click Resize. Then a box will appear so you can enter the new dimensions for your pic. Hope this helps!

      Reply

  61. Sigh. I’m new to maintaining a church page, and wound up here because the post photos were often cropped badly, and my attempts to mess with them before uploading were not working. I hope I will understand this better after going through all your information.

    I just wanted to make two comments: 1. I tried getting previews of cropping by using Only Me on my own timeline, and darned if it didn’t display the complete photos, just what I wanted, but the church page does not do this. 2. If facebook had one sensible software engineer working on their interfaces, all this stuff would be unnecessary, because they would have a way for the user to adjust the photos before publishing.

    Reply

  63. Just recently, I’ve noticed that when I upload more than one image, it favors either a square or a landscape crop for all images, regardless of the original format of the primary image.
    What’s more, the selection of the location of the crop is not smart, I think it automatically sets to the top border of the image, making my shots look weird, particularly portrait oriented shots.
    This is frustrating because I don’t want to bombard my followers with individual uploads; I prefer to upload three at a time. Is there a workaround for this? Also, any thoughts on why facebook is so photo unfriendly? It seems like a lot of their user content is photos and other image based media…

    Reply

  64. To add to what I wrote earlier, I have realised that I had overlooked your comment that images should be posted with a minimum width of 851px and that some very large images I have do get resized correctly by Facebook. However, I now find that if I increase sizes of smaller images to above, even well above, the 851px then they still get cropped as well as partially resized. This really is crazy, what’s the solution? Do I have to increase the resolution or something?

    Reply

  70. Maybe I missed it, but all I want to do is make pics in POSTS smaller. I don’t like the way they blast they page when I want the text to be the focus. Is it possible to shrink them in some way?

    Reply

  71. Thanks for the updated info, but what about the dimensions of the cover photo as viewed on a mobile device, specifically a smart phone? It used to be that the viewable area of the cover photo was 144px in from both outside edges, so you had about 563px of the center of the image displayed. Is this still correct?

    Reply

  72. I have a blurry photo, I think there are a few causes that makes it blurry, zooming into the photo to get a better frame, or too bright and noises around pictures cause by the first moment taking the photo… I am confuse…

    Reply

  73. Great article. This is exactly what I was looking for! I only can’t find dimensions for sliding links. Anyway thank you for sharing.

    Reply

  74. It looks like FB has once again changed the algorithm for sizing at least for landscape portraits. I have looked at several well known photographers’ pages today and they all look fuzzy, hazy and not sharp at all like they were just before the new year. I checked on my page because I knew how mine looked and yep they look the same as every one elses. Have you noticed?

    Reply

  79. Thanks for all the great info here! Do you know what the image guidelines are for the “shop” button within a business page? Thanks so much!

    Reply

  80. Hello, I’ve been having trouble with this for days and am hoping someone can help me.

    I am trying to make a large fb photo from one of my albums my profile picture. When I do this, fb shrinks the photo.

    I have already tried resizing it to 2048pX1400p, except still when I upload the photo to my profile pictures it is smaller than my other profile pictures.

    How can I get this photo from my albums as big and clear as possible as a profile picture?

    Reply

    • When you choose the option to use a photo as your profile photo then FB displays how it will look and gives you the option to crop the photo if it’s too large. Or, you can just upload the photo to your own editing program and resize it to FB dimensions 180X180, or go larger just so long as its a square. If the album photo is more of a rectangle then I use adobe photoshop and play with the resize “canvas” option to get it as close to a square as possible, which is really fun because it forces more creativity. Have fun!

      Reply

  81. Thank you for this post! It has been very helpful. I am wondering if you can help with this. Lately, I’ve been seeing posts where the images have a scroll bar that moves the images from left to right. Would you happen to know how that is done?

    Reply

  83. Great article. One thing that’s confused me is that, following a recent update, the iPhone Facebook app shows the profile picture centred in the cover photo, whereas on a laptop browser it’s still where it always was, on the left. Mine looks great (well,m the way I want it anyway!) on a laptop, but the centre of the cover photo is obscured on the iPhone app. (See Simon Roskrow on Facebook for the example). Anything that I can do?

    Reply

  85. I have a question on posting pictures with external links. If I post it with just the picture and no external link, the picture comes out correct and resized to fit the box, anything from 2000×1499 down . When I add an external link to that same picture, it then crops the top and bottom of the picture. What is the proper ratio or size to use for those or any suggestions? Thanks- Adam

    Reply

    • Hi Adam,
      When I type an external link URL into a new post and then upload an image there’s no connection between the two.
      I see you mentioned adding a link to a photo. Can you describe the steps to do that? Once again, I can’t find anything in FB’s help system to give me a clue how it’s done.
      Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.
      Laura McGaffey

      Reply

  86. The “Edit profile picture” is no longer an option. I went to adjust how my page’s profile picture displayed but didn’t have that option anymore.

    Reply

  87. Great info. Thank you. I have a very specific question that nobody can seem to answer for me. I noticed a while back that when posting an album of photos on Facebook, the way it was displayed varied greatly from my phone vs. Desktop. While viewing on my phone the pictures are displayed in one long thread, scrolling up and down to view, where the quality is terrible and I’m not able to select individual photos to view full size. When I go to look at them on the desktop, they are displayed one at a time, full size, where you click on the right side of the picture to view the next image in album. I could just blame it on my phone, galaxy s5, but it doesn’t happen with every album I open. Specifically on other photographer’s pages, somehow they have it set up that pictures in their album are never displayed in this low quality, scroll down form. What’s happening? I’ve forced myself to only post one photo at a time because it doesn’t result in loss of quality. Do you have any advice?

    Reply

  89. Thanks! Such a helpful resource. I’ve found that when posting as a page, I can upload a new image to the link preview, and if it’s properly sized, it will display the larger size. That was a nice update.
    I haven’t been able to figure out how to upload multiple pictures to a post from a Business page (not personal) without creating a photo album. You seem to share above that you can do this though? Could you elaborate? Thanks for the help!

    Reply

  92. I’m a notice and always just use photos straight from my android. They’ve always been nice & large, whether horizontal or vertical. Just recently the photos are very small. Is there a simple fix? I don’t have time nor the knowledge to alter the photos as you have mentioned. I thought it might be my phone settings, but changing them didn’t make a difference.

    Reply

  93. Hi David

    I have noticed a change in the Facebook group app on android. They have changed the layout. The cover photo was all good set at 351 x 815 but now viewing this on my mobile cuts outs a lot of the cover photo. This is the cover photo on my group page. Seems the pic is not as wide anymore.

    Reply

  95. I have tried just about every size from 400 px to 2048px and FB crops them so badly that they are unuseable. I don’t get it. Does anybody have the right dimensions. I used all those in this document. Nothing works.

    Reply

    • What aspect ratio are you starting with and what kind of cropping is it doing? If you start with a square 470×470 or larger you should get the maximum size on the timeline.

      Reply

    • Yes, they’ve modified the sizes while sticking to the same basic layout. So it still functions much the same way but the display sizes are a bit smaller than they were. An updated version coming very soon.

      Reply

  98. Thanks for this, very helpful. Question: how does fb determine if the first image is a portrait, landscape or square display? I uploaded 4 “square” images, the orientation for all looks very square to me, but fb keeps displaying the first one as landscape or portrait. I tried changing the first image, testing all four images, but fb still keeps displaying the first one as portrait or landscape. I would like all four to appear in four equal sized boxes. Is there a way to make this the default? Thanks.

    Reply

    • I don’t know what the secret sauce is or of any way to change the behavior. My first suspicion is that the images might not be pixel-perfect squares, so I’d look at that first. You can find the pixel dimensions in Finder on Mac or Windows Explorer on Windows, looking for Properties or Info. There are a bunch of other programs that can tell you that kind of information. A good free one for Windows is Irfanview. On Mac, the default image viewer Preview will do it (Tools > Image Inspector). If they’re not perfect squares, you could try cropping them and re-uploading them.

      Reply

  99. thanks for this article, What about video size? I am always confused. Some square video do not appear as square in timeline, some others does. Some videos starts in auto play, some other does… this is very confusing. What are the differents rules known for video format on facebook? both for mobile and desktop.
    best

    Reply

  101. Thank you! I have been struggling for hours to fit some info graphics from the movie “BOUGHT” (www.boughtmovie.net) to my timeline and non of them came out the way I wanted until I followed the directions on this post. I This post in awesome, very cool and very helpful!

    Reply

  102. I have a Facebook group that contains more than nine photo albums. Facebook will only display 9 albums on the front page so the other albums are displayed on a second page. I want to move a photo album from page 2 to page 1, and another one from page 1 to page 2. I’ve been unable to do this. Any idea ? Or is there a way to diaplay more than 9 photo albums on the front page of the group ? Thanks.

    Reply

  104. Thank you very much for this post! Extremely helpful!
    I bookmarked this page to have it nearby as really handy tool. :D

    Reply

  106. My shared photos used to be 640x640px. Starting on Feb 1st they are now 960x960px, which means its grossly enlarging photos that were never that large to begin with. Now they’re all distorted and I am forced to upload directly to FB and then the photo on the timeline is all wrong. So-so-so-annoying!

    Reply

  107. hi, great article, i’m sorry if there is an answer for this already here, didn’t see one.
    what is the current size for cover page on groups? if you can mention the dimension including the (join, share, notification area)?
    thanx

    Reply

  109. Hi,

    Great article and very useful!

    Do you know if Facebook recently changed the dimensions for status update images used on Facebook company pages? Previously I always used the 155 pixels in width and 114 pixels in height dimensions but last week I noticed the images are being cropped to square dimensions. Do you have any insight on this?

    Reply

    • I’m seeing this too. Links posted on company pages now seem to display the image at 158×158 pixels, so all my old ones look all pixelated and rubbish. And they’ve started cropping the edges to make them square. :(

      I do wish Facebook would document these changes themselves somewhere. They have the inside knowledge, they could just tell us instead of leaving everyone guessing.

      Reply

  110. I just discovered this tutorial. Wonderful! It works. Thank you so much! Photoshop is too complicated for this.

    Reply

  111. I post 3 memes daily on my FB page. All my memes are 900×900. I usually get quite a few shares for my memes, and I checked one out today. To my shock, it was cropped on all sides, cutting off my URL. When did FB stop scaling and start cropping shared page post images? Do I need to rescale all my memes to 504 x 504? They always appear fine on my page @900 sq.

    Reply

    • Hi, I think your comment post relates to my recent comment post. It seems Facebook has implemented some changes in the way images/pictures are being scaled.

      Reply

    • As a follow-up to my earlier post about how Facebook changed the way they are cropping shared images . . .

      They are cropping the images on the sides, and the bottom. So if you have a URL in the image, it needs to be above the crop.

      I was using memes that were 900×900 and changed them to 504×504, but they were still being cropped. So I took a cropped image and laid it over the original, and posted a new meme with a safe area built in. After it was shared, I looked at it, and it was fine.

      This is what I found out:

      If using a 900×900 image, you should have a safe area of 22px on the top and sides, and a safe area of 30px on the bottom. I hope this helps everyone.

      Reply

  112. Why did you delete my question? It was valid… maybe it was a mistake. Here it is again: My image on my Facebook Page is perfect. When I post the same image on my Facebook Group, it’s fuzzy? My image is 504 X 504 72 dpi, PNG-24. Doesn’t Facebook treat the news feed on a Page and on a Group the same way?

    Reply

    • Hi Monica, It wasn’t deleted–just not moderated yet. Without moderation there’s a lot of spam.

      I’m afraid I don’t have a good answer for you off the bat, but other users have also noticed similar issues when using groups.

      Reply

  113. Hi David. Thanks for the info. MY PROBLEM: I created a 504X504 PNG-24 image for my company’s Facebook PAGE and it’s great. I upload the same exact picture on my company’s Facebook GROUP and it’s fuzzy! I searched Google to understand why, but no answer… I want to put a different image each week, so I would appreciate your help.

    Reply

  115. David, very nice article. Can you provide info on mobile, specifically iPhone 5 and 6? The cover photo shrinks down and cuts much of it off on the mobile app. Thanks for any help you can provide. Sandy

    Reply

    • If you have the luxury of starting with large images, 2048px is a good target. It’s more than you need for now–there aren’t many monitors yet that can display that many pixels wide–but it provides some cushion for future technology as well as higher density display screens like Apple’s Retina screens.

      Reply

      • H i David, Thanks for your great info. I am a pro phototograher and one of my HS senior clients wants to post a bunch of the images I took or her on her facebook page. Some are horiz and most are vertical. What size do you suggest I give her so that hopefully she can’t print them but that they will still look good on Facebook. I am thinking also of adding my logo at the bottom of each image. Can I get your advice? Thanks so much!

        Reply

        • You can’t entirely prevent the from printing them, but you can certainly keep them small enough that any prints won’t look great. For that, somewhere around 800px to 1000px across the longest edge is probably a good target. While it will still allow printing at “full” resolution (240ppi-300ppi) up to 3-4 inches across, it won’t look great for printing any bigger. But it is big enough to still show off the image well when displayed on screen. You can of course go smaller, too.

        • Thanks for replying to me, David, re sizing images for facebook,. You said they could still print them at full resolution at 240 or 300 dpi but wouldn’t it be better to change that to 120 or 150 dpi? Or would they not look good at that resolution on the Facebook page?

        • It doesn’t work like that. For digital images, the ppi setting doesn’t really mean anything. An image that’s 1000px wide at 300ppi is exactly the same size as an image that’s 1000px wide at 150ppi. Both will allow printing of a 3 inch wide print at 300dpi. For digital images, what matters are the number of pixels, not the ppi setting.

          It does mean something when it comes to something physical, like an actual print (usually then it’s dpi) or the display density of a monitor/display. In those cases, the density (or ppi/dpi) corresponds to a physical dimension (specifically, an inch of paper or screen).

          The upshot is that you can ignore the ppi setting for this purpose and control the size with the dimensions (width by height).

  119. This looks a fantastic resource! Does anybody have a Twitter equivalent? I’m particularly looking into how single and multiple images are displayed. I recently published a square image, assuming the higher and lower 25% of the content would be cropped for preview. However, it looks like Twitter has assessed the photo and decided to show the lower 50% of the photo in preview…

    Reply

  120. Thanks this is super helpful having all the specs and examples in one place! With our pages, we tend to upload more horizontal photos to the timeline and just make sure that the sides that will get cropped have nothing important in them. This lets us upload large images, but gives us more space to adhere to the 20% text rule when we need to add some copy.

    Reply

  121. A very helpful piece of information my friend you have shared with us here. I am really thankful. Facebook has a nasty habit of changing stuffs without informing. Moreover they tend to push such updates in parts and hence some pages are up-to-date and some are still stuck with the old layout. But now I have got the average idea about how to still control the photograph views on my Facebook timeline. Thanks again.

    Reply

    • There’s not one simple answer, unfortunately. Resizing precisely before you upload does give you finer control over any sharpening or compression, but only if Facebook isn’t going to recompress the file automatically. So that means keeping it under 99KB. A downside is that when Facebook next tinkers with their display and image sizes (which they will, at some point) your already-posted images might end up displaying oddly. It’s also not ideal as more and more displays shift to high resolution displays like Retina.

      A safer bet might be to upload images at exactly twice the size you need. That’s slightly more future-proof while also giving you control over aspect ratios. The “twice the size” sizing seems to provide better recompressed quality in some instances. But it also means that Facebook will automatically recrunch your images.

      Reply

  126. Thank you so much – excellent resource!! One problem I have sometimes is when I hyperlink to another page on my website for a lost pet or pet for adoption and the image cuts off the heads of animals – which is a bit distressing! How can I avoid this? I can upload a picture instead of using the suggested picture, so maybe I could create a different size image on white and then paste the whole image on it (with head!) so the animal shows in it’s entirety. What could you suggest, woudl that work, if so what size would that image need to be ideally? Thanks so much for help our pets have heads on facebook…! Please see our facebook http://www.facebook.com/petsonthenet and the post today 27.11.14 for the Lab X for adoption at Hastings . His head was intact on the original picture, but facebook have cropped it off…Thanks from us and the pets in New Zealand.

    Reply

    • Yes, it’s extra work each time, but since there’s not much flexibility with link thumbnails, your best bet is probably to create your own image to fit on a background that’s 484×252.

      Reply

  128. Hi! I just have a question. I have made my cover photo in my Facebook page and i am so satisfied. But when i look at it through my phone (iphone) it does not fit the whole thing. Is there anyway to solve this?

    Reply

  130. This article is fantastic – it is in my bookmark feed and I utilize it daily – great social media resource!

    Reply

  134. David what would you recommend to be a good size/ratio for photos in a new album? I generally edit travel, event, etc., photos before uploading, but the size for the lightbox viewer I cannot pin down as to what is preferred. I know that a width of uptown 2048 can be uploaded, but those seem awfully big to me for web viewing. I’ve read that 960×720 shows best, but my testing seems to show that 1200×900 works perfectly. Comments?

    Reply

    • I’m not sure there’s a perfect size since FB resizes it automatically to fit different screen sizes. Viewing it on a 27-inch screen is going to be quite different than on a laptop. An a large proportion of FB users access the service via mobile. I personally prefer to keep the images I post on FB the smaller side if only to keep the range of uses of any “borrowed” images to a minimum.

      Reply

  135. I’m wondering if you might be able to help me figure out a WordPress to Facebook mystery. As per your suggested guidelines I resized my image to 504 x 504 pixels for the “featured image” slot on WordPress. When I posted it to Facebook the thumbnail came out perfect on my timeline but when I looked at the posting on my newsfeed the image was completely wrong. It is as if Facebook enlarged the image dramatically and then just pulled a random 504 x 504 pixel section from within it. I enthusiastically welcome your thoughts!

    Reply

  137. Hello and thanks for the precious information. I am using a dialog box to post a link, also specifying the preview picture in the URL. Following the guidelines the picture get the full size in the timeline (OK), but is displayed in the small box at left when the link is viewed from my personal page. Is this normal?

    Also, I have seen that on iphone (5s), the picture is displayed in the small box at the left ALSO in the timeline; I have seen other posts on iphone having the full pic at the top and I don’t understand what is the reason. I have also tried to add the og:image meta tag (in addition to the picture specified in the dialog box URL) but nothing changes.

    Reply

    • I can’t reproduce this issue. When you first go to select the area for the profile pic the selection is automatically just a small part of the image, but you should be able to move the blue crop borders to enlarge it.

      Reply

  146. Wish I could say this works for me, but sizing my timeline cover collage to 851 x 315 still leaves it unsharp and fuzzy looking. Any other suggestions? I have tried sizing with the W x H and also Dimensions on export from LR. Getting super frustrated! Consequently I have no cover photo posted right now. Thank you for any input.

    Reply

    • No need to crop in advance. Just upload at full size (no kidding – even if it’s 5,000 pixels wide) and be aware of the constraints imposed by the 2.7 to 1 aspect ratio before you select an image to use. Once uploaded, you can drag the photo around to get the best composition. When somebody clicks on it, they will see the full image and not a horizontal crop. Very simple, and makes articles like this with thousands of words, totally unnecessary.

      Reply

  147. I’m curious about the nine photos it shows as your most recent tagged photos… I want to find an image I like, split it into nine and then tag myself so the image will appear there, but every preview in that box is centred and also resized, how does that work??

    Reply

  150. Excellent resource. Thanks so much for this post. Something I noticed in a test I ran today is that every single image has anywhere from four to eight pixels unevenly shaved off all four sides when shown in the posts on our group page even when within the size limits. Very odd. Very facebook.

    Reply

  151. Thanks, David! This was extremely helpful, and it is very satisfying to have a question on the internet and find a post like this that answers it so thoroughly. Great stuff!

    Reply

  157. Thank you so much David greatly appreciate this information. Know I have a very clear understanding of utilizing images on Facebook. You ROCK man!

    Reply

  158. Many thanks for all this truly helpful info. its been a fantastic resource for me personally to learn how to create for twitter and FB. The level of detail you’ve covered is immense and it covers much more than what’s found elsewhere. Its been a definite time saver! I’ll be back for the rest too!
    A big thank you from me. You have a new fan! :)

    Reply

  159. Thanks David, do you know about the image resolution? I prepare my files for web at 72ppi but the other day I downloaded one of my images from facebook and to my surprise it was set at 96ppi. I always wondered why the facebook images don’t look as good as the original. I think I know now: heavy compression and if you did like me and prepare for 72ppi which then got up-scaled to 96 ppi then you are sure to have a horrible result. I would appreciate your thoughts on this?

    Reply

    • The only dimensions that matter for the size for this are the length and width. So a 1024x768px image at 72ppi is exactly the same as a 1024x768px image at 96ppi (or 300ppi, for that matter). You can put whatever number you want in that EXIF field, but it doesn’t affect the image size, resolution, or image quality. If you’re getting poor results, the most common culprit is the heavy JPG compression that’s being automatically applied. It’ll affect images with many tones more than ones with only a few, and be particularly noticeable in smooth gradations.

      Reply

  160. This is very helpful. The only thing that’s missing (the thing I need, of course) is the photo size for EVENTS, which seems to keep changing…

    Reply

  161. Good information, thanks!

    I recently took a tour to Tibet, bringing only my iPad and my camera. When I got home I noticed a significant difference in resolution when uploading from my iPad, compared to the my PC.

    I’m not sure if this applies to all photo uploads, but I test-uploaded one picture with both iPad and PC, and got the following:

    Original picture resolution: 5184 x 3456

    After iPad upload to Facebook: 960 x 640

    After PC upload to Facebook: 2048 x 1365

    So there is a huge difference in resolution, between iPad and PC. If picture size is important to you, always use the PC.

    Reply

    • Thanks for the tip. I suspect those size limits are imposed by the iPad (or other) apps and uploaders. I haven’t tested, but there might be ways to use the non-default Facebook upload that’s built into iPad to work around those limits.

      Reply

  168. I would like to add a large “Second” to what KBT said. I do web development and understand the work that goes into something like this. THANX for your efforts and for sharing!! As you said, FB doesn’t make it easy for us to use it.

    Reply

  176. Does anybody know how to get to the previous months with the new layout? You used to be able to select 2013 then a drop down menu would give you access to all the previous months. Not anymore.
    Thanks if anybody responds!

    Reply

  177. On my blog page, where I promote floating homes, I just posted a new album and pictures also populate the photos area in my left hand column. . I would rather have “photos” show a selection of pictures from previous posts. I thought I could hide individual pictures there, or delete them from that section, bring some of the older ones back up. No longer seem to be able to do this (without I assume deleting the images from the album, which I do not want to do. Am I missing someting here, or is this the new reality.?

    Reply

  179. A pity the full width highlight feature seems to have gone…which greatly diminishes the impact an eyecatching photo.

    Reply

  180. Image size is not my problem – If I upload more than nine photos – let’s say twelve in a photo album – only nine are ever displayed on my main page. How do I fix this?

    Reply

    • Sorry, but I can’t replicate this issue. I just tested with 13 images and it seems to have worked fine. If you change the order of them in the upload dialog, is it the same ones each time that don’t show up?

      Reply

    • 470px wide by 394px high. Unlike regular timeline, it’s not cropped automatically, so on vertical photos it gets pushed to left with white space at right.

      Reply

  184. Hello, great work! I’m a little confused however as I’m looking at conflicting information – photo thumbnails on a page timeline, you’ve said they’re 403 px wide yet this site says they’re 470 px wide…I note that yours identifies the white space while this other resource also points that out but has other sizes which seemingly overcome this issue?

    Reply

        • Most pages have not yet been switched over to the new layout yet, so the information below is still current for the vast majority of pages. Facebook is in the process of rolling out a new layout, but very few pages are using it yet. But in looking at the pages that are using the new layout, the information at that link you sent is not correct for either the current or the new layouts. In short, a new layout is coming, but the information on the external link appears to be wrong.

          I aim to add the image dimensions for the new layout in the next day or two.

  185. In posting to Photo Albums of FB, some of the pictures come out very large, nearly filling the screen, others appear much smaller, yet they are all the same size files.

    Reply

  186. Thanks this is the BEST overview of the image size rules I’ve ever seen. I saved it to PDF to reference in the future. I especially love the pixel numbers drawn over the photos for quick reference. But I was unaware of how to change photos associated with posts and many of the new features. MANY thanks!

    Reply

    • 470px wide by 394px high. Unlike regular timeline, it’s not cropped automatically. On vertical photos it gets pushed to left with white space at right.

      Reply

  188. Very informative, thank you. But I have an issue: when I post a link to a page I manage, the photo is showing up the old fashioned way (small cropped photo box to the left of the link preview) instead of the new larger, wide photo ABOVE the link information. Any idea what I’m doing wrong?

    Reply

    • It’s possible that for some reason your page is still getting the old layout. They roll out the changes gradually, often over weeks or months. But I would have thought the page would have been updated by now–the change was made quite a while ago. Other than that, I’m not sure what could be causing it, I’m afraid.

      Reply

  190. Hi !

    Thank you for posting this, been really helpful.
    I can’t find the box “fit to sclae” to fit in the logo of a company and it’s been really irritating. The logo is rectangular and woul’d like to have it fit to scale, but I can’t figure it out. I followed your steps but I don’t have any “fit to scale” box.
    Any ideas ?
    Thanks.

    Reply

    • You’re right. I’ve just tried it and it appears they’ve quietly changed that so it’s no longer an option. I’ve updated above. The way I’d work around it is to flesh out the square before uploading so as to upload a square image.

      Reply

  191. Hi, my FB cover photo looks great on my laptop, but on my phone, it gets completely cut off (the focal point of the image is on the right side, which doesn’t appear at all when the phone is vertical). Is there a way to set the cover photo image to be right-aligned, or something along those lines so that the right side of the image appears on my page? Thanks.

    Reply

    • I don’t know of any way off the top of my head, but will look into it. What browser are you using? Some mobile browsers are better than others about rescaling images.

      Reply

      • Thanks for the reply. The issue occurs in the Facebook App on my phone (Samsung Galaxy s3). When the phone is horizontal, it’s fine; when it’s vertical, the entire right side of the cover photo is missing. Kind of weird that they seem to automatically crop off the right half without allowing the user to align the image as he/she wants .

        Reply

        • I’m not sure that there’s anything that can be done about that. Whether that’s controlled within the app itself or in Facebook’s style sheet, unfortunately there’s no way for the user to influence it.

  192. … thanks for the informative article.

    I like facebook, but consider their terms of service, and the stripping of all metadata, really evil.

    The obvious answer would seem to be to host images elsewhere, and post links to them – are there any disadvantages in taking that route?

    Reply

  193. I am using Photoshop with “403×403 and more size with high resolution, but when i post on my page text on picture get blur? suggest me some tips for HD picture with text,

    Reply

  196. Hi, I found this a useful article and then saw this issue of not having control of what thumbnail image appears when posting on a FB page. (It also happens with messenger). I ran across this same issue recently at http://www.squerb.com where I work.

    The solution to this is to make the the appropriate meta tags are present on your website that Facebook understands. In this way FB won’t just scrap for any images it finds. This is referred to as Open Graph. I think the best page to review if you are new to this subject is: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/web/webmasters/

    There’s a lot to Open Graph but you need simple make sure the meta properties for og:url, og:title, and og:image are set. You should be able set multiple images and then you can cycle through the thumbnails. Of course, this approach assumes you have control of the web page.

    I also found it very helpful to use the Open Graph Debugger: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/ which will tell you what Facebook will actually pickup when pointing to your site.

    I hope this helps!

    Reply

    • Thanks Rob. Excellent tip. Unfortunately controlling the meta tags works better on roll-your-own sites rather than if you’re using a content management system like WordPress, but maybe someone has started a WordPress plugin (or Joomla, Drupal, etc) since I last looked. But as you suggest, if you’re rolling your own site and have control over the HTML, this is the way to go. Thanks!

      Reply

  200. Great article very informative. Ive had problems with vertical images appearing jagged like you mentioned. It looks on FB “like” pages vertical images do not appear jagged for some reason. Do you think this anything to do with it?
    Thanks

    Reply

  201. Hi David,

    Great article.

    It would seem Facebook has changed the image dimensions once again. Previously, highlighting an image would stretch it to 846 x 403 px (on a desktop company page at least). In the past couple of weeks I’ve noticed the image height seems to fit but the sides don’t stretch out to fit–thereby leaving grey bars on the left and right of the images. I’m wondering if this is a bug or if there’s new image dimensions to adhere to? (Seems to do the same to videos now.)

    All the best,

    Luke

    Reply

      • Hi,
        Great article on image sizes for FB and their power to use our images as they like. I have recently opened a page on FB but am now concerned about my images being borrowed by them or anybody else for that matter. It seems majority of FB users are not aware of what they are signing up for. There must be a lobby to fight against FB policy. Is there any?

        bharat

        Reply

  202. David,
    Can i make my photo a full-width photo thumbnails on the timeline in my personal page? (not fan page) It seems that even i’ve had highlighted it but it still remain the same :( please help.

    thanks,

    Donna

    Reply

  205. This is awesome, thanks! Although I’ve posted a timeline image larger than 403×403 – and I can’t see how there’s an option to reposition the centre of the photo. The only pencil icon I can get is when I click to enlarge the image and select “edit”. Perhaps FB has changed this since you originally posted this article?

    Reply

  206. I am a photographer (just starting a business) and want to post a collage of photos (with the ok of clients) taken at recent photo shoots. What would be a good size for the collage to be used for Facebook? Also when I create this collage in photoshop do I do it using the web preset size? thank you for any insight you can offer>…

    Reply

  207. Hey David,

    This is a great article. Thanks for taking the time to compile all this information. As a PR pro, we manage a number of social media accounts for our clients, and figuring out all the different picture sizing issues can be complicated. This article made it easy. I will definitely be referring to the cheat sheet.

    -Luke

    Reply

  208. Thank you so much for this article, it was very helpful and complete. It was exactly what I was looking for.
    One thing, though, on the Facebook’s Terms of Service, there is no Strikethrough or Bold text, I had to go to Q&A in order to understand what was being removed and what was being added.
    Thanks again!

    Leandro.

    Reply

  213. Thanks for this great writing. I am a retiree helping other retirees and newbies to use this social network. Your writing is comprehensive and easy to understand (the graphics help, too).

    A question, though. What is the latest on the ownership/copyright issue? Us retirees have lots of memories to share :).

    Thanks.

    Reply

  214. Your section titled: Photo Thumbnails on the Timeline was great. (I’ve long been infuriated by the way FB handles thumbnails on the Timeline. [This explained it all: “this is being applied to the thumbnail: height: auto; width: 100%. That translates as the image filling the full width no matter what, but the height doesn’t have to”.] Guess I’m crazy to want to see my vertical photos looking as pristine & well-composed as my horizontal photos on my Timeline? Curse you, FB!) Anyways, thanks for explaining, David. Helped a lot!

    Reply

    • It seems to me that the best option would be to create a white horizontal image with the correct aspect ratio and then to paste your vertical image into that before uploading. You would then control the amount of white space either side.

      Some image manipulation programs allow you to add margins of a particular size and colour. Adding the appropriate white margins to either side of your vertical image would enable youth construct an appropriate horizontal image.

      You may need a one pixel black border on extreme left and right to prevent the Facebook software automatically cropping off the white space.

      Reply

  215. This is very helpful. Especially the link share image size. All of my tags will be sized accordingly now. Appreciate it.

    Reply

  216. Thanks so much David, I’m pretty new to this all and you have helped me a lot. Very well written and easy to understand. I appreciate it. Got some adjusting to do now!
    Julia

    Reply

  218. Hello David, thank you for your wonderful solutions.
    I have learned since to size my images for Facebook accordingly, but I see to be doing something wrong. The text on my images still appears blurry, even though I make the images on Illustrator on the prescribed size and make sure the image is not above 100kb to ensure that it is not compressed.
    This link will explain my query. Could you perhaps help in identifying my mistake?
    https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/1393999_343255452485608_1888142882_n.jpg
    Thank you so much, Asma M

    Reply

    • Looks like Facebook’s compression is taking a toll on it. As an experiment, try replacing the background image with a plain single color and see if it still does it. I suspect it’s because of the gradients in the background image.

      Reply

    • As a work-around for issues like this I’ve been rendering my images for Facebook as PNG 24s. The compression doesn’t seem to be as aggressive with PNGs IMO.

      Reply

  220. Thank you David for this, I have been struggling to make a standard for the size of photo posts on our page and after permutation and combination of several sizes, finally i have a nice cheat sheet from your page. I hope this helps me. Thanks once again!

    Reply

  221. I have uploaded cover at the recommended size (851×315). Shows up full size on computer. When page is viewed on iPad or iPhone cover photo is chopped off left and right. I notice that your cover photos are adjusted on these devices so that the entire photo is viewable. What are you doing that allows FB to adjust for portable devices?

    Reply

  223. Thank you very much for this post. I’ve been resizing my images over and over again trying to make them fit to Facebook. This was very helpful!

    Reply

  224. I just uploaded a landscape photo directly from my Samsung S3 to the Facebook news feed and it’s appeared in square format (it seems to have squeezed it rather than crop it) – any idea how I make it appear in the landscape format next time?

    Cheers

    Tony

    Reply

  226. Hi there David,

    I’m trying to figure out the upload dimensions for photos on a ‘friends’ profile (not a fanpage).
    I always adjust the sizes to 403 x 403 px (or higher), but lately, Facebook seems to cut the photo off.
    The photo is visible in the square size in the friend’s timeline, but on my own profile, it’s a rectangle in stead of a square pic.

    For instance this one: http://on.fb.me/16ChHti
    In the timeline people see the square pic, but on our fb profile (www.facebook.com/vlla.nl) it shows as: http://postimg.org/image/po8qrg005/

    The size of the picture was 404 x 404 px, so it should have been displayed as a square pic, right?

    Have you experienced this bug as well?
    Looking forward to your answer!

    Kind regards,
    Geertje

    Reply

    • i’ve got exactly the same problem as yours a lot and here’s some suggestion for you.

      first reposition your photo to it’s bottom. it will make your photo’s viewing in facebook looks like cut off at the top by the text you type.
      here’s your photo when i post it in my time line and do the reposition http://postimg.org/image/dq6xry2el/

      now right-click on your photo then select Inspect Element (i use Firefox as my browser)
      a dock bottom window shows up then choose inspector tab, you will see a highlighted script like this

      img class=”scaledImageFitWidth img” width=”504″ height=”504″ alt=”Photo: LEKKER WEEKEND
      ALLEMAAL! En kom langs vanaaf bij VLLA op Vrijdag met r.i.t.m. (VLLA, VOS) Michiel Verbeek (Catch!, ADE) & Loran Hamelink (Kleurenblind Festival) [[ https://www.facebook.com/events/322515771227415/ ]]” src=”https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/p480x480/1466121_607279925974699_891211120_n.jpg” style=”top: -126px;”>

      pay attention at this on the script above:
      1. width=”504″ height=”504″ which means your photo scaled to 504×504 pixel dimension
      2. style=”top:-126px;” means that the text you type cut off your “new scaled” photo by 126 pixel from the top

      now open your original photo (403×403 pixel dimension) in photoshop then adjust to 378×378
      that number came up from 504 minus 126 pixel

      open new image with 504×504 pixel dimension and copy-paste the 378×378 photo on it

      adjust the position like this http://postimg.org/image/yzrhrt1zl/
      you may use another background color instead of white but the focus here is the position

      now you can post the new 504×504 photo on facebook, add the text, and here’s what it look a like
      http://postimg.org/image/btmrhdo4j/

      i just found this trick recently and will do this till there’s more practical way

      i’m sorry with my English coz i’m Indonesian

      Reply

      • Thanks for this detailed post, David.

        I had the same problem as Geertje. Even if I did not post any text, the photo gets chopped. I also used 403 x 403.

        Thanks also Wiwit. Your English is fine btw. It seems so complicated though. So we have to adjust the photo size depending on amount of text we will post with it?

        Reply

  227. Hi David, Nice article. I uploaded over 50 images to a FB album then it posted a few sample images on my timeline to show I have added new images. Can I edit which images it displays on my timeline?

    Reply

  228. David,
    This is a very helpful article, Thank you for writing it. As an accountant using social media to advertise and spread the word, I often spend a lot of time trying to navigate the perils of marketing and technology. I have clipped your article to Evernote already, and I have a feeling I will refer to it each week when I work on my “Sales Tax Tuesday” posts. Thanks again!

    Reply

  229. Hey David,

    Thank you so much for this article. It has made it’s way well up the Google ranks and I found this as my first hit and answered my question. So thank you again. :)

    Reply

  230. Thank you so much for posting this! I’ve been searching for these guideline and somehow people explain it in a very confusing way. But your explanation is completely clear and easy to understand.

    Reply

  231. Hi David!
    Thanks for this post!!! It’s indeed helpful!!
    I prepare pictures b4 uploading them on facebook using the sizes you have indicated here above. They fit awfully! But the ugly jagged artefacts around the pictures still occur. What’s wrong?
    Thanks for your kind attention!
    Rosamari

    Reply

    • Jagged artefacts are usually from too much compression. Assuming the sizes are all set correctly, when you prepare before uploading, you could try setting the JPG compression to the highest possible setting (100, 10, or 12, depending on what software you use) to see if that clears it up. The highest possible setting (ie. least compression) isn’t really necessary for most uses, but in this case it’s going to be recompressed by FB anyway.

      Artefacts can also come from too much sharpening. If you’re applying sharpening, you could try reducing the amount.

      Reply

  234. Awesome article! Thanks for putting this great resource together. Best article I found on sizing pictures.

    I’m having issues resizing my icon app image. FB says 111 x 74 pixels and I’ve tried everything and it won’t load it. Any suggestions? I use Paint. Is there a better program to resize photos in? I’m on a PC

    Reply

    • Not necessarily better, but there are a bunch of Windows programs that will handle resizing. Some free ones worth a look include Irfanview and Gimp. As for why it won’t load, right click on the file in Windows Explorer or My Computer, then choose Properties, and check that the pixel file size is indeed 111×74. Sometimes aspect ratio issues can trim a pixel here or there.

      Reply

  235. Hi David, thanks for excellent post. As for profile picture, if you upload it at 180×180, when downscaled to 160×160 the picture becomes blurry. Usually the best results when downsizing are when resulting image dimensions are precisely 1/2 of original ones. So I’d suggest uploading profile picture at 320×320 pixels. This will give crisp and sharp picture vs. the one downscaled from other size.

    Reply

      • Just a suggestion for your incomplete page. I have been Google searching for nearly 10 minutes, And the maximum size, or ratio for a comment photo is no where to be found. (Photo comments are usually meme’s on fan page posts if you weren’t sure what I meant)
        If you include this, you may have the most complete guide to Facebook image sizing!
        At the moment I am still searching for information but I am afraid I will most likely have to test for the ratio myself. I will post my findings or results of my test once I find it. (Don’t worry about inaccurate pixel dimensions I am a graphic designer.

        277x231px ref: http://www.blivz.com/SizeTest.jpg

        Your Welcome :) Please include ‘Photo Comment Maximum Resolution’ in your keywords so others may find this, as I had to find out manually and could not find after 15 minutes of Google searching.

        Reply

    • Hello,

      i searched everywhere and i just tried your tip to upload profile picture at 320px*320px but it still appears blurry on small avatar size and on advertising sample on the right. I do upload a Png file (24). The image looks perfect as profile square picture but awfully blurred on small size avatar (aka 32×32). Do you have an other suggestion ? Should i try a 640px*640px ? I am really struggling with this and we are about to launch our business page. Thanks a lot. Regards

      Reply

  237. i want to upload a photo which should be displayed in the whole horizontal width of my timeline….right now the whole image is shown at one side of the timeline and another image nearby…..pages like abercrombe and fitch have uploaded photos to the whole width…!!how am i supposed to do it..!!!

    Reply

    • I’ve just taken a look at the FB page, and I’m afraid I don’t follow. All the images I see are displaying regularly as squares on one side of the timeline or the other. Without seeing exactly what you mean, two possibilities come to mind: images will display full-width on many mobile browsers because the two sides of the timeline are condensed into one vertical column, or perhaps they’re using a separate FB custom page aside from their timeline. If you know of another example I can take a look at, send it along.

      Reply

  238. David, i want to upload album to facebook. What size should i make on photoshop? What about ppi? I tried to upload but the pictures really bad n not clear to read in text part. Thanks David..

    Reply

    • There are many “right” answers to this, but a good place to start is sizing to something like 1024px on longest edge and then using 72ppi (the ppi doesn’t actually matter, but many standard computer screens using a pixel density of 72ppi, so may as well put that in if you have to enter something in that field). With text, you might want to try experimenting with a larger image of, say, 2048px on longest edge.

      Reply

  239. Great work on putting all this information together! I really appreciate having this all in one place…Thank you so much! Have a great week! :-)

    Reply

  241. Hello!

    Great article!

    I experience some problems with vertical photos, and I hope you can help me out.
    All of my horizontal photos looks perfect (quality and resolution), except my vertical photos. It seems like when i upload vertical photos directly to facebook….its look like crap!!!! any solutions?
    Lightroom export settings:
    2048 in long edge… quality 100…. output sharpness – standard.

    Thanks in advance!

    Reply

    • Hmm . . . it *should* be fine with those settings, and I’m afraid I haven’t seen that problem before. Are they stretched or is it a pixelation issue?

      Reply

      • I get this problem as well. Horizontal photos look great, while vertical images take on a mushy, overly compressed quality. I use similar Lightroom export settings as Christopher, but am wondering if, for vertical photos, I should make the long edge shorter than 2048 pixels. Thoughts?

        Reply

  242. This is a great post – I came across it because I’m hunting down an explanation for the following problem:

    When I share tall infographics on my page timeline (and I almost always schedule in advance), everything on my activity log looks great and the image scales appropriately. However, when the image posts, the entire picture is displayed, making for a very long, very tiny, very unreadable graphic (see https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=573735716011459&set=a.367098320008534.94074.290631597655207&type=1).

    Have you come across anyone having this issue?

    Reply

  243. It is impossible for me to upload such color pictures sharp on FB. Terrible results!!!
    On other sites i’ve no problem at all. They look very sharp. What to do?

    [IMG]http://i44.tinypic.com/35n5xyf.jpg[/IMG]

    Reply

  244. David, thanks for a great post. Very helpful.
    One question: I recently created an event, uploaded an image as the event profile image. However, on the mobile, the event shows partial pic. Apparently the partial pic it has is an odd section of the image. I need to fix it. Is there a way to specify positioning for the mobile? Or even better upload an entire new pic for mobile size?

    Reply

    • The mobile display appears to have been changing a bit lately. I plan to investigate fully soon, but I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for you right now.

      Reply

  245. Thank you so much David, I was to post my new singing video on my Facebook page but the image size is not kinda right, it doesn’t really show the content, I’m so glad to find this.

    Reply

  246. “short edge to 403px” do you mean the shortest side of the photo? (I usually crop and resize – and copyright) and then the pics look shitty. Recently uploaded original size, those look good. Makes sense now, reading your story. But I rather stick to putting up smaller pics.
    We usually have either 750by500 pixels, or 400*600. Thanks for info!

    Reply

  247. I hear Uploaded Timeline Photo Thumbnail dimensions will be changing soon. I’m already seeing changes when viewing my business page on my mobile app (not the Pages app, but the regular Facebook app) – they are now landscape orientation! It’s driving me crazy – the square dimension made it simple to keep things looking nice whether viewing on the mobile app or on a desktop’s Timeline format or in the Gallery. Any idea what the new dimension will be so I can somehow start working within that when creating images? I’m not a professional photographer by any means, but I use my amateur photography heavily to promote my business. Just when I think I’ve gotten ahold of things, they change the “game”.

    Reply

    • Yes, apparently there are changes being rolled out that are driven by mobile browsers. I’ll update when I can get access to an account that has them implemented.

      Reply

      • This was all very, very useful for someone with knowledge of pics but not how the manage size and placement. King of like drivers training. Now I know everything and I’m a really dangerous 16 year old loose on FB, LMAO! Watch me go. Seriously thank you for the well thought out explanation that even I grasped on the first pass. Job well done Sir.

        Please keep us up to date on any size changes.

        Reply

  248. Thank for this great advice David! I use photoshop to edit my photos, what do you recommend using for the resolution for these types of photos for Facebook? Does it make a difference on the internet like it does when you print? Nothing worse than a great photo that looks blurry just because of the resolution. Thanks!

    Reply

    • No, except in very rare circumstances, resolution never really matters on the web. The ones that matter are the number of pixels in each dimension.

      Reply

  249. Its very nice article with the essential information about the pictures on Facebook. As, now a days, everyone is uploading more and more photos on Facebook.
    Well, I used to upload the photos with 960 px. What is your suggestion for regular post/pictures uploads? (I am not interested in uploading photos at full resolution as it is not a wise choice ot do.)

    Reply

    • I set short edge to 403px. That keeps thumbnail looking good but small enough that image security issues are minimized. It would be great to be able to offer larger images, but too risky (speaking from experience).

      Reply

  250. Thanks for this! Awesome tips. Can I offer a suggestion? Next to your cheat sheet, can you throw in a visual map of the various image types? There’s so many, I don’t know what a Cover Photo is from an Uploaded Photo! :)

    Reply

  251. This is awesome! Posted on my Facebook page. And, as my company’s social media person, I’m finding that I refer to these tips often!’

    Reply

    • Not sure what you mean. Did you zoom in the browser window (that is, does it affect everything in the browser window or just Facebook)?

      Reply

  256. Hi, I have a corporate facebook page, with a profile photo that is currently my logo (sometimes my photo). But when I’m logged in, and then go to the pages of other people, I’m allowed to comment…but it shows a gray box “anonymous” head rather than my profile photo. Any recommendations for how to fix? Can’t find info anywhere!
    Thanks so much for any tips you can provide.

    Reply

    • Not sure what could be doing that, since the current profile picture is always public, by design. Have you got it set to “Use Facebook As” your corporate page rather than your personal profile?

      Reply

  257. Is there a new spec that Facebook rolled out for sizing photos within the last day or two? I always resize to 2048 on the longest side to avoid Facebook’s compression but noticed a degradation in quality last night (March 13, 2013) to a vertical photo uploaded that evening.

    Facebook had changed my home page which now features larger photos (which I tend to upload one at a time with no “high quality” option button that I can see), much larger than ever before.

    So will there be a new, larger size for those who like to resize for optimization? It seems that Facebook keeps this information hidden for some reason. Everyone will get their home page changed to this new layout within the next few days, it seems.

    Thanks so much for any input.

    Reply

    • Not sure. Thanks for the tip–will keep a close eye on it and update as necessary. If they are updating things, some of the rollouts can take a while to get to everyone.

      Reply

  259. Hi,

    I have a question. I resized my image to be 403 height and less than 403 width but facebook still cuts the bottom of image off. I have to Highlight the photo for it not to do that. I tired resizing to less than 403 and it still does this. What am I doing wrong?

    Thanks so much.

    Oli

    Reply

  260. Fantastic information! It’s so hard sometimes to figure out what Facebook is doing. Thank you so much for laying it out so simply. Wonderful graphics as well! : )

    Reply

  261. HELP! How do I reposition a single photo when it is one of a two photo “gallery” on my page?
    Take a look at Catherine Karnow Photography and see the two photos I posted side by side and you will see that in the right hand photo, I am almost cropped out. I want to move just that one photo to the right. How do I do this?
    I really like your website by the way.
    Thanks,
    Catherine

    Reply

    • Hi Catherine,

      I’ve taken a look, but I’m afraid I’m not sure which one you mean. If it’s selecting which part of the image shows up in the square used for the thumbnail on the timeline, in the timeline move the mouse over the thumbnail and then choose the pencil icon from the top right of the post. In the drop-down menu, there’s a Reposition Photo option. You can only drag in one dimension, but that might be what you’re after. If it’s not, let me know.

      You have an incredible collection with absolutely beautiful photos.

      Reply

  262. Thanks, man. I’m applying for a job to take over the social media campaign for a group of hotels, and this is one of the many things they’re not doing well. Now I know the trick to right-sizing the image! You rock!

    Reply

  265. Hello. What I’ve noticed is that you can upload fairly large files (ie, I don’t shrink or resize first because FB compresses them–it’s just a step I skip). However, if you download that same file from FB, it’s only KB in size now. So, even if someone does steal it, they can’t really print it effectively at that 40kb size.

    Reply

    • Actually I had someone download and print my photos – with the watermark on them, but I hadn’t compressed them first. They used them in a photobook, so the size of the photos was not large, but they used them anyway and they came out ok. This was someone in my family who I would have happily sernt the full size files had they asked, but now I’m annoyed that they used them without my permission and probably won’t share photos with them in the future.

      Reply

  271. Can I add something to the “403px” debate on Facebook timeline images? What I found was the width is key. When I posted an image 403px high but less than 403px wide, Facebook scaled the image up to be 403px wide with the result that it truncated the bottom off – which was now greater than 403. When I made sure the original image was 403px wide (and 403 high), it behaved itself. So, key message is make sure images are 403px wide and if you want the entire image to display make it 403px high too. Hope this is helpful.

    Reply

  272. Hi,

    Do you by any chance happen to know what’s the apt size we need to stick to when it comes to the Facebook experience on mobile.

    When we set the width to 403px….. it appears cropped from both, left & right, sides.

    Reply

  273. Dave, they’ve changed it all again :/
    Seems like a 507 x380 dimension will get you the whole pic if you edit it for that ratio.
    Unfortunately I couldn’t get the ‘highlight’ feature,which used to spread across the page landscape format, to work any more – even using a 1014 x 380 for testing..

    ah well,, thank you FB that you are FREE O:)

    Reply

    • Do you mean for the link thumbnails? 507×380 is basically 4:3 aspect ratio, which is within a few pixels when resized for 155×114. So if you use a 4:3 image you’ll basically get the full image (technically, it’ll crop about 2 pixels off).

      Reply

    • 403 is not correct – and niether is 507 – if you upload photos of either size to the timeline they ar enot displayed in the proper dimension and when you click on the photo in timeline to view it full it’s distored and not in the original size……..

      Reply

      • I’m afraid I can’t reproduce the issue you’re having. I’ve added an example above when uploading an image 403px by 403px where the full image is used as the timeline thumbnail and displayed at the same size in the photo viewer.

        Reply

    • ohhh dear – this is embarrassing :O) – but the very next day, all my FACEBOOK pics reverted to ‘normal’ (which really is a setting on a washing machine) – and my new ‘ratio’ for
      FB pics mutated into abnormal views. So in fact, my ‘507 x 380’ idea was only good for less than 24 hours…. just seems like there a was a temporary glitch in how FB displayed photos – but it was quickly resolved.
      So back to your observations, Dave, which I wholeheartedly concur with O:).

      Reply

  274. i’m having trouble uploading photos. it seems only very small 300,000 file size will be accepted. this didn’t seem to be a problem in the past. if facebook reduces the size automatically, why are larger file sizes not accepted? also, i seem to have seen an option to upload high quality photos somewhere in facebook before. does this option still exist? finally, if i choose to just add a link (with thumbnail) to the photo on my website, does facebook have the right to use the image even though i have not uploaded it to facebook? thanks.

    Reply

    • For the 300,000 file size image, what width and height in pixels is it? If possible, resizing it to under 2048 x 2048 should be safe.
      You can upload fairly large files directly into Facebook photo galleries.
      As for the rights issue, it’s a good question and would really take an intellectual property lawyer to answer (which I’m not). The best I can do is refer you to the terms of use, which are at the end of this post. Without being a lawyer myself, my guess is that they could only use what you actually upload to Facebook. But I see the complication that the thumbnail is just a smaller version of the same image content and I’m afraid I don’t have a good answer.

      Reply

  276. I had so many problems trying to uplaod my image for my photography page! It kept on modifying the logo size at 180×180 to the point it would cut off the corner edges of my logo. I ended up having to open a blank document in photoshop and adjust to 300×250 and copy/pasted the 180×180 logo. Worked for me.

    Reply

  277. Great article and resource!

    Do you have any experience with photos in Facebook “groups”? I can upload and albumize, but everything disappears very soon. (Yes, I “Post”). Even more baffling, I can upload the exact same photos to non-“group” pages!

    I know you’re not FB support, but thought I’d ask……

    Thanks!

    Reply

  278. I need help with this too: “Robert Lowdon: Anyone know why it seems to hate the colour red and blue. Facebook always seems to pixelate these colours.”

    We use a pinkish color for one client and blues for another. These always turn out pixelated! Especially the timeline photos we use with posts. Why and what’s a fix for it?

    Reply

  280. Here’s what should be a simple question but I’ve not found the answer yet.

    I’ve uploaded some photos to an album. How do I use those in a post? It seems like when creating a post I only have the option of uploading a new picture, not using an existing one. Thanks for any help.

    Reply

  281. What do you consider the optimum size for a photo that a company posts on their page? I ask because in the past, my company has consistently posted (displayed) images that are 520 x 370 and once loaded to the page, most of the image is cut off. Would you recommend 960 x 720 instead?

    Reply

    • Unfortunately there’s no correct answer for that. It all depends on the design of the page. The ones on this site, for example, are usually around 900 or 940 pixels wide. Much wider than that and they crop on a lot of computer screens. But if there’s text around it, like in the post text pages, then I do them smaller.

      Reply

  282. Can you tell me if its possible just to have a cover photo without profile pic. I know I can delete my profile picture but I’m left with a square empty space and would like to show the whole of my cover photo. Thanks Sue

    Reply

  287. FB compresses, at least now, the heck out of uploaded photos. I was looking at your dimensions and comparing to one I had just uploaded and mine is smaller @775 x 560 and yet they STILL compress it even further to make it look terrible.
    Check the watermark I used on the muay thai boxers on my page and you’ll see what I mean. http://tinyurl.com/8cdwg3h
    Oh well!

    Reply

  288. Thank you, David, for your informative article! It should be very helpful for me when I start modifying my FB page. I am so non-techy it will be a bit of trial and error for me even after reading helpful things like yours, and catching the recording of the webinar from TAA. I was a dummy an missed seeing it live. Again, thanks!

    Reply

  289. Thanks for the info. When I try to save my image using a graphic program to 2048 x 2048, the final out is 2048 x 1370. I don’t understand why it cannot be 2048 x 2048 (width and height). Any idea?

    Reply

    • It has to do with aspect ratios. If you crop your image to square shape (us the 1×1 setting in Lightroom’s crop tool), you’ll be able to export to 2048×2048. Otherwise, it sounds like you’re you’re trying to fit a rectangular image inside a 2048×2048 square container, so the long edge will be 2048 and the short edge shorter than that.

      Reply

  290. Nice article with the several dimensions, i think its the first time that i see it in a table, more easier if we already know the imagens name and locations. :-) Greetings.

    Reply

    • In most situations, PPI setting doesn’t actually matter much. But if you want to match it to the output, typically printing is done at somewhere around 200-300ppi, typical screen monitors are at 72ppi. High resolution displays like new generation iPads, etc, use a higher ppi display setting. But ultimately what really matters is the number of pixels in width and height.

      Reply

  292. This is helpful – wish Facebook made things this clear.

    Can you tell me why, when aq photo well within allowed dimensions is posted, sometimes only part of it appears in the actual ttimeline? The whole picture appears when it is clicked on, but Facebook crops it arbitraily in the normal display.

    Reply

    • When sharing a Web page to the Timeline, I have discovered that Facebook appears to do what you described if the URL gets translated. For example, if you do not supply the protocol prefix (http://), or you include or exclude “www” but the website is set up to default the other way, or you use “http://” and the web server forces it to “https://”. So, when sharing a page with a graphic as a means of publishing it on Facebook, make sure the image is the right size for (e.g., 484×252), then be sure to use exactly the right, complete URL for the page.

      Reply

  293. I see images from the Aol Image page listed as “may” by subject to copyright. Does that me they are or that it’s an option? If you use one of these images for a FB Cover doesn’t that clear copyright infringements–because you are using it for artistic purposes?

    Reply

    • Sorry, Tanya, but I’m afraid I can’t really answer that. Only an intellectual property lawyer could give you an authoritative answer on that, sorry, and I’m definitely not one.

      Reply

    • All images are subject to copyright unless specifically named as copyright free. If you want good low price images try istock or similar.

      Reply

  295. hello,

    i noticed that you had a the dimensions of “linked photos” being 90 X 90 (which seems to increase depending on where the image is linked from)

    i did noticed as well when i link a youtube file it posts a much bigger image. it does the same when posting a video on facebook.

    take a look at this fb page and scroll down it – most of the pics are 90 wide – but then a video hosted by fb is larger and the same with a video hosted on fb.

    https://www.facebook.com/pages/Code-Film/196467796949

    wanting to know if there was any way to really maximize my image thumbnail???

    thanks

    Reply

    • Thumbnails for links are 90×90, but the thumbnail for a regular photo you upload to a Facebook photo gallery displays larger–same for videos. So it depends on what it is you’re sharing, whether link, photo, or video.

      Reply

  296. David,

    Can you tell me whether it is possible to place photos on Facebook that are taken from Istockphoto, Flickr and other such sources ?

    I have heard that Facebook requires ownership of photos.
    Regards.

    Reply

  298. I have a question. I’m the admin of a company fb page and I’m having trouble posting a link to a blog entry from the company website. I attach the link but it doesn’t give me a choice as to which thumbnail i want posted. The arrows are there but unclickable. The image it gives me is a random image on the company website. I can’t find info anywhere on the web. Do you have any ideas?

    Thanks so much for any ideas you can provide.

    Cheers,

    B

    Reply

    • If you add a link from within Facebook, it will try to grab one of the images from the linked page but it won’t give you the option of uploading another one. There are third-party options that allow you to specify a particular image; some I’ve used for that are sendible.com and Post It At, and there are probably others. There’s also a way you can specify a particular image to use in the html code of your page, but that isn’t especially practical for anything running off a CMS.

      Reply

    • Lots of folks are having the same problem B. It is a behaviour change when posting a url to a blog post on fb. The past behaviour was one where there was a choice of pics from the blog post to choose from, now we can’t get anything but our profile pics to post as default even when pictures are the correct size. No one seems to be owning the resolution to this, see this discussion.

      Reply

Questions & Comments

You have to agree to the comment policy.

About Me

I take photos. I travel. I do it for a living. Seven continents. Dozens of countries. Up mountains. Under water. And a bunch of places in between.

You can find my main site at havecamerawilltravel.com. Or check out what’s in my go-to travel photography kit.

Get in Touch

Newsletter

shares