What Image Size Do You Actually Need? A Practical Pixel Guide

“What size should this photo be?” is one of those questions that seems like it should have one answer and instead has a dozen, depending on where the image is going. Here are the dimensions that actually matter, and how to hit them exactly.

Common dimensions by use case

• LinkedIn profile photo: 400 × 400px minimum (displays as a circle, so keep your face centered).
• LinkedIn cover banner: 1584 × 396px.
• Instagram square post: 1080 × 1080px.
• Instagram portrait post: 1080 × 1350px (4:5 ratio — the largest Instagram will show before cropping).
• Resume photo (where one is expected — common in parts of Europe and Asia, less so in the US): typically around 300 × 400px, portrait orientation, at least 2:3 aspect ratio.
• US passport photo: 2 × 2 inches, which at the standard 600 DPI works out to exactly 1200 × 1200px.
• UK/Schengen passport photo: 35 × 45mm, roughly 413 × 531px at 300 DPI (many photo booths and printers expect specific DPI, so check with whoever is printing it).

These aren’t arbitrary — platforms and government forms reject uploads that don’t match, sometimes silently by stretching or cropping your photo in ways you didn’t intend.

Resizing to an exact pixel size

A resize tool that lets you set width and height in pixels directly is the most reliable way to hit these targets — you’re not guessing at a percentage or relying on an app to interpret “medium” or “large.” Enter the exact numbers above and you get exactly that output size, every time.

One thing to watch for: setting width and height independently, rather than scaling proportionally, will stretch or squash the image if your original isn’t already close to the target ratio. If your source photo is a normal 4:3 or 3:2 phone photo and you resize it directly to a square like 1080 × 1080 or 1200 × 1200, faces and objects will look visibly compressed.

Crop first, then resize

The fix is to crop to the right ratio before you resize to the exact dimensions. For a passport photo (1:1) or an Instagram square post (1:1), crop the image to a square region first — centered on the subject — and then resize that square crop down to the exact pixel target. For a 4:5 Instagram portrait, crop to a 4:5 region (for example, 1600 × 2000px from a larger photo) before resizing down to 1080 × 1350.

This two-step process — crop to ratio, then resize to exact size — avoids the distortion that comes from forcing a differently-shaped photo into the wrong pixel box, and it’s the same approach professional photo labs use for passport and ID photos.

A quick sanity check

Before you submit a resized photo anywhere official (passport applications especially), reopen the final file and check it visually at 100% zoom. Government photo requirements are stricter about proportions and head size within the frame than most social platforms, and a photo that’s the right pixel dimensions but has your head too small or too close to the edge will still get rejected.