My Photography Image Size Guide for Social Media, Website, and Print Marketing Use
The hard work is behind you, you hired a professional photographer, prepared for the upcoming photo shoot, and the photos have been taken, edited, and are now delivered to your email address via a downloadable online gallery.
You need to download the images to use them for your marketing efforts. There are a few size options, and you’re not sure which sizes you should be using for your social media marketing campaign, your website, or your print materials.
If any of this sounds familiar to you, I’m happy to announce you’re in the right place. In this guide, my goal is to demystify what all the print sizes mean, and when’s the best time to use each one.
I’m also going to include the size guides for Instagram, Pinterest, and Tiktok, in case you want to market your work on those social media channels.
First Things First: Download The Images
Download BOTH the high resolution and the web resolution files
Store them in a folder on your hard drive, and have that folder back up the cloud.
This way, if your computer crashes and you lose your hard drive, you still have access to your imagery since they’re stored off site. I use Google Photos Storage for this.
All About Image Size Options
The image to the right, is Pixieset’s Downloadable sizes image settings. I offer my clients two size options when downloading their images:
High Resolution: Original (which I export from my post processing software at 5000px long edge)
Web Size: 2048px. This is the optimal web size for retina display (Apple Mac) screens. Anything lower than this might look pixelated and blurry.
Web Size: What Can I Use It For
Repeat after me, web size is the best size. You’ll use these images the most online.
This will be your workhorse image size. Web size is best for the following uses:
Website
Portfolio
Digital Article Features
Blog Posts
Newsletter Opt-ins
Email Marketing Releases, etc.
**For extra credit, and to really optimize your website performance and load time, you can take your web sized images and further compress them via https://tinypng.com/
This extra compression step allows them to maintain high resolution, but shrinks their size so your website loads really quickly, which encourages people to stay on your page for a longer period of time.
If your web page takes too long to load, people bounce. That’s not good. All of your marketing efforts are designed to drive traffic to your website, don’t lose them over your web page taking too long to load on their screen.**
Pressing the arrows button when uploading a post to Instagram allows you to toggle between square sized posts and 4:5 posts. Based on research data, 4:5 posts perform better than square posts since they take up more real estate on your phone screen
Social Media Automation Image Size Guide
Web size images are a great starting point for creating social media content. With that said, if you plan to batch create and automate your social media content on Instagram, Pinterest, or Tiktok you’ll want to make some adjustments to the image sizes for a seamless experience.
Instagram:
Even though IG started as a photo sharing app, it doesn’t follow traditional photo formats and all it wants to be when it grows up is Tiktok. You have the option to upload the following formats:
a 1:1 square post
a 4:5 ratio portrait post
a 16:9 Reel, Video, and Instagram Story
If you want to be desktop dependent you can use Canva or Photoshop and create IG posts to their exact specifications for automation, you can do so by adhering to the sizes below:
Square Post: 1080x1080px
Vertical Post: 1080x1350px
Video and Reels: 1080x1920px
Instagram Story: 1080x1920px
Landscape Scroll Images : 1350x2160px (you can create this size in photoshop and cut it into two slices, and export for web, or use a canva template and export.
TikTok
Vertical Video: 1080x1920px
Pinterest pins follow a 2:3 size format, and if you wanted to create pins their size ratio is below:
Vertical Post: 1000x1500px
Social Media Automation Programs
Tailwind (great for Pinterest)
Print: When To Use Your High Resolution Images
Use your high-resolution images for print, this could include brochures, mailers, pamphlets, business announcements, print magazines, print advertisements, and the like.
Keep in mind that the color space for web use is different than the one typically used for print, so I usually have my clients loop me into the conversation so I can ensure the printer gets the correct resolution images and color space required by the printer for optimal results.
Stacy Markow is a former sommelier turned Interiors & Commercial Architecture Photographer servicing design clients across the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex. Not only can I capture the beauty of your next interior design project for your portfolio, I can also help you celebrate reaching the finish line by choosing the perfect bottle of Champagne.
For more information on Stacy’s services, or to see more of my photography work, you can visit my website at www.stacymarkow.com
