Throughout history there have been several important social networks related to photography. However, Instagram It was one of the bets that most quickly achieved success, leaving platforms like Flickr behind. Following the acquisition of Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram abandoned its focus as a photo-centric network to become more of a social network. Something like a Facebook for young people. However, Instagram has always been marked by how gridded the network is when it comes to processing images. In many social networks, we upload an image and it is shown to our followers with a similar quality to the one we uploaded. With Instagram, this is different. It will not matter that you take your photos with the best professional camera on the market; if you don't upload the file in a certain resolution, Instagram will do the image processing for you. And that can be the difference between showing a nice picture on your profile or looking like a complete mess out of focus. Choose the format and resolution property it's crucial for your photos to look perfect, so we're going to give you some tips and tricks to have a perfectly harmonious gallery.
How important is resolution on Instagram?
Most users don't care at all about such technical issues as the way Instagram treats the images and videos we upload. The usual thing is to upload an image that we have made and retouched from the mobile phone and not complicate life.
However, many professional profiles they depend on their images being displayed correctly on the social network. Since the beginning of time, Instagram has been known to be quite a fussy app about images. The social network has very strict rules regarding the quality of the images. If we do not comply with them, the system itself will be in charge of resizing them so that they comply with the appropriate format. And in that case, our image will lose a lot of quality.
If you work with professional photography or video, you will surely be annoyed to see your content reduced in quality to meet Instagram standards. For this reason, it is interesting to spend a few minutes preparing the photos and videos that we are going to upload to this social network. If we give Instagram the posts as the system wants, they will respect the files we upload, thus avoiding the problem. If you want to know how to do the process and what are the resolutions and parameters that you should use, we encourage you to continue reading.
Square, rectangular, horizontal and vertical
The formats are important because they help us to transmit better on the social network and, for this reason, we must keep in mind that part of the success of our publications could be in knowing how to squeeze those aspect ratios that Instagram has been offering practically since its origins. And if there is one that has characterized the application owned by Facebook until relatively recently, it is the square, those 1:1 images that have accompanied us day after day in our timeline to which the latest news from the profiles we follow arrived.
In any case, those limitations of Instagram were left behind when did not allow other different formats and that is what we are going to explain to you that the sampler seems broader. The way to select, cut and adapt the content that you have captured with the camera of your smartphone into something that the social network rewards, for artistic quality or whatever, but that in the end helps you to make your way in that jungle of influencers, and aspirants, who share millions of snapshots daily from their mobile devices.
Let's go there.
The perfect size for Instagram
Instagram doesn't care about all the megapixels your camera has. The service will reduce the quality of those giant images to optimize the loading of the galleries, so don't worry about uploading the image at the highest possible resolution, because it will be reduced. With the idea of not giving the service so much work and avoiding more compression of the account, the ideal is to upload the images with a width of 1080 pixels, which is the maximum width supported by the service.
If you upload images with a greater width, the system will reduce them, and if you upload a smaller one, it will increase them and, therefore, they will lose a lot of quality. In the early days of Instagram, images had a maximum width of 640 pixels, but luckily things have changed and now we have much more information in a photo.
format issue
Another detail to take into account is the format of the image. Until now, you had always been told that photos with your mobile phone had to be taken horizontally, however, the importance of social networks and the way in which we use them have completely changed this concept.
Best vertical and 4:5 format
On Instagram it was not going to happen less, so you are going to have to change the chip and think more vertically than horizontally. The reason is the way the images are displayed in the feed. Since Instagram stopped restricting the 1:1 format a few years ago, little by little it has been adopting new possibilities when it comes to interpreting aspect ratios when displaying content through its platform. Although, if what you are looking for are those dimensions that make the most of the feed of the people who follow you (as far as a post on your wall is concerned) you should use the 4 format: 5.
It is something that many have been asking for for a long time, and although it is no longer a problem, it involves some details to take into account that will determine the success of your photo. And yes, depending on the image format, your photos will look more or less.
If you choose to place an image horizontally, the feed will adjust it to keep the aspect ratio and, forced by the width of the screen, the height of the image could be quite small. This means that your photo takes up little space on the screen, and when a user scrolls through their entire feed, your photo might not attract attention at first.
However, if you shoot more for the vertical, the larger side will be the height of the photo, and in that case the image will take up more space on the screen. In this way, when scrolling, your photo will remain longer on the screen and, therefore, it will be more visible.
How to choose the correct format?
This is not to say that you shouldn't upload horizontal photos, but if you're looking for visibility, you'd better make the most of the vertical ones. Assuming that the maximum width of the image displayed by Instagram is 1080 pixels, this is the optimal resolution with which you will have to publish your photo vertically: 1080 x 1350 pixels. Once again, referring to those posts you make on your wall.
Because? The vertical format will have a 4:5 ratio, this means that for a width of 1080 pixels (the one that Instagram allows) we can have a maximum height of 1350 pixels. Other different formats will crop the image and make you lose information above and below (as long as you have a disproportionate height), since the final format that Instagram applies will always be 4:5. If the image is smaller than those proportions, it will appear without problems, but you will have wasted width or height as the case may be.
For horizontal formats, you can still squeeze that 1080 pixels wide. If you want to upload a photo in landscape format, the most extreme dimensions you should use are 1080 by 608 pixels. Because? Because it is the optimal resolution in which Instagram is not going to spoil your photo with a black border above and below the image. Everything that is below those 608 pixels will suffer this effect.
Crop the image yourself
It should be noted that it is important that we must be the ones who do the cropping of the image if we really do not want to see a drastic reduction in the quality of the image and we want to publish it in a format other than square. Currently, this phenomenon is less pronounced, but until now, uploading a large image to Instagram was synonymous with ending up with a poorly compressed and poorly optimized image.
How do I crop the image?
Instagram Crop Tool
The simplest option and with which you will practically not have to do anything is to use the Instagram editing tool. The problem is that you might not have full control of the placement of the image when doing the cropping. The default format of Instagram is 1:1 (square), but if you want to have a horizontal or vertical view of the image, you only have to press the stretch button to allow you to see the new crop.
Snapseed
Although if you want to have complete control of the crop, see exactly what is going to show and what you are missing in the image, you could use the application of snapseed, since its cropping tool includes the 4:5 format so you can get a perfect crop to upload to Instagram. To do this it is as simple as:
- Access your phone's app store. This app is available for both Android and iOS.
- Search for Snapseed and download it.
- Open the app and click on the "+" that you see in the center to access your gallery and load the photo in question that you want to edit its dimensions.
- Now click on "Tools" and, in the drop-down menu that we will see on the screen, we will have to click on the option "Trim".
- In this section we will have all the possibilities at the level of dimensions and aspect ratios that we need. If we swipe from right to left we can vary between different preset models such as 5:4.
- But, as you already know, what really interests us is not 5:4, but 4:5. For that, it will be as simple as clicking on the icon of the rotating arrow. Automatically this cutout will become the dimensions we needed.
- Click on the check in the lower right corner to confirm the selection.
- Now click on “Export” and then on “Save” or “Export” as you need. And it would be
birme
This is a very easy-to-use online tool that we recommend if you have a little more elaborate work to do than usual.
Birme is mainly used to do batch actions. What does that mean? Well, what are you going to be able to crop multiple images with a single action. In this way, you will be able to process a lot of images for Instagram in one sitting, without wasting time. This can also be useful if you are going to make an animation with photos and you are going to publish it on Instagram as a Reel or as a video.
How is it used? Simply access the Birma official website from a browser. Write the dimensions you want in your images and upload all the images you want to modify at once. If you are interested, you can also use this tool to rename files, change the format and even add a watermark or a nice border to your photos.
And the video?
If you don't know what resolution a video for Instagram should have, we anticipate that in this field, the measurements are not that important. Resizing videos is a much more tedious task, and Instagram doesn't trash videos like it usually does photos. Even so, we are going to solve your doubt so that you can also optimize this type of multimedia to the maximum.
Video in square format (1:1)
If what you want is to upload a video in square format, it will be limited to dimensions of 1080 by 1080 pixels. Unlike film standards and the audiovisual world in general, Instagram videos are limited to a frame rate of 30 frames per second. The clips can last a maximum of 60 seconds and the maximum size that we are allowed to upload is 4 GB per file. The minimum resolution is 600 by 600 pixels.
Video in portrait format
For videos in vertical format, we return to 4:5. The minimum resolution is 600 by 750 pixels. If we are looking for the highest possible quality, we can stretch the ratio up to 1080 by 1350, exactly the same dimensions as in the photos. In fact, it makes sense, because on Instagram we can make a post combining photos and videos in a horizontal gallery. The limitation also remains stable: one minute, 30 FPS and 4 GB per file.
Videos in horizontal format (landscape)
Finally, the horizontal videos We must upload them in a 16:9 ratio. The time and space limitations remain, and also the height and width, which is the same as in the photos, that is, 1080 by 608 pixels. You can upload even more panoramic videos, but they will take up a very small region of the frame. If you want to do this, we recommend that you keep the aspect ratio 16:9 with white or black bands and insert your widescreen video inside.
Time limitation and Reels
Regarding the one-minute time limit, you can skip it by making a carousel of one-minute videos uploaded to the same post. You can apply exactly the same in stories, although Instagram included a new feature that allows you to make stories up to a minute long.
Regarding the limits of the Reels, you should know that these short videos must measure 1080 by 1920 pixels maximum, and not last more than 60 seconds. In addition, the .MP4 file that we upload to the social network must not exceed 4GB in size.
If you're having trouble uploading videos to Instagram Reels, check that last bit of information. Go to your mobile phone's gallery, search for the video you are trying to upload and tap on the get information icon. In there, you will be able to know if you are exceeding the maximum space that Instagram allows.
If so, you must deactivate some parameters in the camera of your mobile so that the video takes up less space. Make sure you're recording at maximum 1080P resolution—disable the 4K option when shooting for Reels—and check the option to record at 24 or 30 stable frames. If your camera is capable of recording at 60 you can use this setting, but if you exceed the file size it makes sense to use a framerate lower for your recordings.