Facebook lets you customize plenty of things and doesn’t really mind if you mess up. Still, knowing how Facebook works and what it considers ideal helps you market yourself on the site.
Whether you do marketing on Facebook or just use it for yourself, knowing the ideal Facebook image sizes helps avoid blurry, grainy photos. Read on and learn how to optimize Facebook image dimensions to get the perfect first impression.
Why worry about image dimensions?
You’ve probably heard about SEO, which is optimizing text to suit search engines. This is a similar process, it’s only that you’re optimizing images.
Optimized images can be discovered and displayed by search engines, which might get you sudden spikes in traffic for no extra cost. Also, optimization makes it much easier to keep consistent image quality, no matter where you got the images from.
Facebook wants to save disk space by compressing and trimming the photos users upload. If you don’t account for both, your Facebook photos will be usable but never look professional. Also, your visitors will have a wildly different experience if they use a mobile versus desktop computer.
About This Guide
Unfortunately, Facebook has made things a bit confusing for users. For example, their help files reveal that your cover photo is sized differently depending on whether it’s for a page, a group, or a personal account.
It would be great if the dimensions were uniform and easy to predict, but that just isn’t the case.
So I have scoured their support files to provide you with one place to find all of the most commonly used Facebook image dimensions. In each section, I’ve included a link back to the relevant help page so that you can double check and make sure nothing has changed before you format your own images.
General Rules for Images on Facebook
The maximum width of any regular Facebook photo is 2048px. If you have a photo that exceeds that, resize, trim and sharpen it. You can even sharpen certain areas only but make sure to save it as PNG for fewer artifacts.
Choose the “High Quality” option if you upload 2048px photos. Ideally, you should transfer your images to a desktop device and upload to Facebook from there. Anecdotal evidence suggests Facebook can detect mobile uploads and compress them for performance.
Accepted image formats are:
- PNG
- JPG
- GIF
Before uploading JPG files to Facebook, save them with the least compression possible. In Photoshop, this means choosing to save as “12 — Maximum Quality”. This will produce a large image size but will minimize blockiness.
Uploading images that have text and go through Facebook’s wringer results in a fuzzy, unreadable mess. To avoid that, save those images as PNG. Try saving as PNG8 and PNG24 if you keep getting poor results.
Facebook Page Profile Picture Size
Your profile picture is the smaller image that appears on your page, not to be confused with the cover photo, which stretches across the width of the screen.
It’s important to note that sometimes the shape of your profile picture will change depending on where it is displayed. On your page, it is square. But in ads and posts, the corners will be cut off to make it a circle.
So be sure to design your profile appropriately. You don’t want any important image elements in the corners of your image.
- Best Image Ratio: 1:1
- Desktop Display Size: 170 x 170 px
- Mobile Display Size: 128 x 128 px
Facebook Personal Profile Picture Size
Just like on any Facebook pages you manage, you can have a profile picture on your personal account as well. It also appears as a square on your personal page and a circle on posts. The recommended dimensions are a little different, though:
- Best Image Ratio: 1:1
- Minimum Image Size: 320 x 320 px
Facebook Page Cover Image Size
As mentioned before, your cover image (sometimes called a Facebook banner) is the rectangular image that stretches across the top of your page. Visitors will see the cover image when they are directly visiting your page.
- Best Image Ratio: 2.7:1
- Minimum Required Size: 400 x 150 px
- Best Image Size: 851 x 315 px
- Desktop Display Size: 820 x 312 px
- Mobile Display Size: 640 x 360 px
Facebook Group Cover Photo Size
Your public or private groups can have a cover photo as well. For whatever reason, of course, Facebook couldn’t have made it easy. Your group cover photo dimensions aren’t going to be the same as your page’s dimensions.
- Best Image Ratio: 1.91:1
- Best Image Size: 1640 x 856 px
Facebook Personal Cover Photo Size
Your personal page can also have a cover photo. And, you guessed it, the dimensions are different. Facebook doesn’t actually provide much information, though, beyond a minimum required width.
- Minimum Image Width: 720 px
Facebook Event Photo or Video Size
Your Facebook events can have cover photos, as well as videos. One interesting thing to note is that you can’t change the main image or video size after you add it, so make sure you get it right.
- Recommended Image or Video Size: 1200×628 px
- Recommended Video Length: 30 seconds to 5 minutes
Facebook News Feed Ad Image Size
News Feed ads are posts that show up directly in a user’s feed, right beneath posts from friends.
- Recommended Image Ratio: 1.91:1 to 1:1
- Minimum Resolution: 1080 x 1080 px
- Minimum Width and Height: 600 px
- Maximum File Size: 30 MB
Facebook Right Hand Column Ad Size
As the name implies, these ads show up on the right side of the screen on desktops.
- Recommended Image Ratio: 1:1
- Minimum Resolution: 1080 x 1080 px
- Minimum Height: 133 px
- Minimum Width: 254 p
Facebook Instant Article Ad Size
These are ads that display within instant articles, which are a special type of fast-loading article that can be viewed directly within Facebook.
- Recommended Image Ratio: 1.91:1 to 1:1
- Minimum Resolution: 1080 x 1080 px
- Minimum Width and Height: 600 px
- Maximum File Size: 30 MB
Facebook In-Stream Video Image Ad Size
These are ads that will be served to people who are viewing a video within Facebook.
- Recommended Image Ratio: 1.91:1 to 1:1
- Minimum Resolution: 1080 x 1080 px
- Minimum Width and Height: 600 px
- Maximum File Size: 30 MB
Facebook Stories Image Ad Size
Facebook story ads pop up in-between friend stories that a user is viewing. They are oriented vertically and stretch the full height and width of the screen.
- Recommended Image Ratio: 9:16
- Minimum Resolution: 1080 x 1080 px
- Minimum Width: 500 px
- Maximum File Size: 30 MB
Facebook Audience Network Native, Banner, and Interstitial Image Ad Size
These are ads that are served by Facebook outside of their app. For example, on a mobile app or website.
- Recommended Image Ratio: 9:16
- Minimum Resolution: 398 x 208 px
- Minimum Width: 398 px
- Minimum Height: 208 px
- Maximum File Size: 30 MB
Facebook Marketplace Image Ad Size
If you are selling physical goods through Facebook Marketplace, you can use these image ads to get your products directly in front of customers.
- Recommended Image Ratio: 1:1
- Minimum Resolution: 1080 x 1080 px
- Maximum File Size: 30 MB
Facebook Video Ad Size
Facebook Video ads can show up in most of the same places as image ads. Here are the general guidelines. Below those, you can find placement specific rules.
- Minimum Resolution: 1080 x 1080 px
- Maximum Video File Size: 4 GB
Placement Specific Guidelines for Video Ads
Feed: Ratio: 4:5, Minimum Width and Height: 120 px
Instant Articles: Ratio: 16:9, Minimum Width and Height: 120 px
In-stream Video: Ratio: 16:9 or 1:1
Marketplace: Ratio: 4:5
Stories: Ratio: 19:6, Minimum Width: 500 px
Search Results: Ratio: 4:5, Minimum Width and Height: 120 px
Video Feeds: Ratio: 4:5, Minimum Width and Height: 120 px
Facebook Carousel Ad Size
Carousels are collections of up to 10 videos or images that users can scroll through. First, we’ll offer some general information that is common to most carousel ad placements. Then we’ll look at individual placement guidelines.
- Recommended Image or Video Ratio: 1:1
- Minimum Resolution: 1080 x 1080 px
- Maximum Image File Size: 30 MB
- Maximum Video File Size: 4 GB
- Video Duration: 1 second to 4 hours
Placement Specific Guidelines for Carousel Ads
Right-Column: Text is not recommended due to the small size of the ad.
Stories: The top and bottom 14% of the ad may be covered by calls-to-action, so leave them free of vital elements and branding. Minimum image width is 500 px.
Facebook Collection Ad Size
Collection ads are usually used to show off your products. They consist of a main image or video with a smaller collection of 4 images displayed below.
News Feed Collections
- Recommended Image or Video Ratio: 1:1
- Minimum Resolution: 1080 x 1080 px
- Maximum Image File Size: 30 MB
- Maximum Video File Size: 4 GB
In-Stream Collections
- Recommended Image or Video Ratio: 1.91:1 to 1:1
- Minimum Resolution: 1080 x 1080 px
- Minimum Height and Width: 500 px
- Maximum Image File Size: 30 MB
- Maximum Video File Size: 4 GB
Facebook Lead Ad Size
Lead ads are a special type of advertisement that include a contact form for users to fill out so that you can capture their information. Lead ads can include either images or videos.
Lead Ad Image Dimension
- Recommended Ratio: 1:1
- Image Size: 1080 x 1080 px
Lead Ad Video Dimensions
- Recommended Ratio: 4:5
- Max Video Length: 15 seconds
Conclusion
Success doesn’t need a genuinely novel idea but merely a rework of the old stuff. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel; just take a picture of it and resize it for Facebook according to the instructions above.