How to fit a big picture on instagram
How to Fit the Whole Picture on Instagram
BorderJulia Enthoven
4 min
This article shows you how to fit the whole picture on Instagram. If you have a full portrait (9:16) image or video or a landscape (16:9) image or video, you can fit the whole picture in your Instagram post by following this tutorial.
Instagram has a maximum aspect ratio of 4:5 on portrait posts (four pixels wide for every five pixels tall). Instagram’s restriction reduces the number of very tall images that take up a lot of vertical space in the feed. Although it’s nice that Instagram keeps users from publishing massive, obtrusive posts, the 4:5 limit makes it difficult to post a whole vertical picture or video that you shot on your phone.
Here's what your tall photos will look like on Instagram without added borders.If you want to fit your whole picture on Instagram but it is taller than the 4:5 aspect ratio, you need to modify your image before posting. Otherwise, Instagram will automatically crop your image to a maximum of 4:5. I recommend the Kapwing resizer as it allows you to add white space on either side to bring your image to the required aspect ratio. In this article, I’ll explain how to fit the whole picture on Instagram in three simple steps:
- Upload picture
- Resize to 4:5
- Download and Post to Instagram
Step 1: Upload Picture
Start by opening the Kapwing’s Resizer tool on your phone or computer. Upload your image file from camera roll or import it from a URL. Kapwing supports images, videos, and GIFs, so you can use it to resize for any kind of media.
The video resizer tool in KapwingOnce your picture loads into the editor, you’ll be taken into the Kapwing Studio Editor where you'll see a preview of your image in the center of the screen.
Step 2: Resize to 4:5
In the Output Size section, select the 4:5 option. This allows your photo to take up maximum vertical space in the Instagram feed without getting sized down. There is a resizing option for Instagram, 1:1, but this shrinks your image to fit in the default square shape.
Resize the image to 4:5 using the button in the Output Size listOnce you have selected the size option, Kapwing adds white padding to either side of your image to make it fit the 4:5 aspect ratio. You can change this white background to any color you want so that it stands out in the Instagram feed.
Step 3: Download and Post
Click the red Export Image button at the top of the screen. After a few moments of processing, Kapwing makes your resized 4:5 picture or video available for download. Whether you're using a desktop computer, iPhone, Android, or tablet you'll be able to instantly download the image to your photo gallery once published.
If you're not signed into a Kapwing account, sign in or sign up using your Google or Facebook account – once you've signed into a Kapwing account, the watermark in the lower right corner will be removed from your final image.
Open the Instagram app and upload your picture. You’ll notice that Instagram crops the picture to square by default, but you can click the expand arrows or pinch the image in the lower left to fit the whole picture on Instagram. When you publish it, Instagram will resize to image width to fit the screen, the white image background will blend in with Instagram’s white background, and your whole picture will appear on Instagram with no cropping.
Note: You can also choose a black background, if you and your followers use Instagram in Dark Mode.
Conclusion
This tutorial shows you a workaround for posting full portrait pictures and videos on Instagram. You can use Kapwing’s Resizer to post multiple images with different sizes on Instagram, add a thin white border around your media, and publish TikTok and Snap videos.
I hope that it helps speed up your social media workflow and enables you to post your beautiful and fun candid moments to Instagram.
For more information on how to resize a video for Instagram, check out this video tutorial (we give you the best sizes for each type of video too!):
Check back in at the Kapwing Resources page or our YouTube channel for other content creation tips and tutorials! And remember to tag us @KapwingApp whenever you share your content on social media– we love to see what our creators are passionate about!
Related Articles:
- How to Post a TikTok on Instagram
- How to Post a Portrait Photo or Video on Instagram
- Resize an Animated GIF
How to Make Pictures Fit On Instagram without Cropping
Instagram is a great app for sharing the daily highlights of your life and experiences – and the platform being highly-visual makes that even more appealing.
Everybody wants their photos to look good on Instagram and once you finally have that perfect photo it can be annoying to see it get cropped by Instagram.
Instagram uses different image aspect ratios, specifically 4:5 for portraits, 1:1 for squares, and 1.91:1 for landscape pictures. If your image does not align with image guidelines for Instagram your image would get cropped to fit.
However, there are multiple ways you can add your pictures on Instagram without them getting cropped which involve resizing, adding borders, and using third-party apps to make your image fit within Instagram’s given frame. Read on to find out how to fit your images for a cleaner and more consistent look.
1. Resize Your Images with Instagram’s Crop Feature
When Instagram first started out it only had the option to upload square images with a ratio of 1:1 however an update back in 2015 changed this as Instagram started to allow uploading portraits and landscape images as well.
It’s very easy to resize your images using Instagram’s crop feature. When adding a new post you will see a light grey icon with a white frame inside on the bottom left of your post screen. Click on it and it will automatically resize your images to fit the frame. You can also pinch your fingers together to shrink your image so it fits in the post.
The main downside to this method is that it is limited and might not fully cover the excess or might awkwardly resize them. You want your images to look good, natural, and neat but the zoom feature can only do so much.
If this method does not work on your image then a much better way to resize your images is to do it manually using a photo editing tool or third-party apps.
2. Manually Resize Your Image
The best way to make your images fit on Instagram without cropping them is to manually resize them. Resizing your pictures this way would allow you to have full control over the image.
It’s important to know that when you do resize your image you will have some empty space around your image. The thing cool thing is that if you are manually resizing your images you can have a custom background for your images.
A great tool you can use is BunnyPic – a free online photoshop editor. You don’t have to sign up, install it or be worried to have a watermark on your images. It is totally free to use and beginner-friendly.
To resize your images using BunnyPic follow the below steps:
- Go to the BunnyPic Editor.
- Click on Open from Computer and select the image you want to resize.
- Go to Image > Canvas Size and scale the canvas to 1080 x 1080 pixels or a 1:1 aspect ratio.
- Create a New Layer and place it below the picture layer.
- Fill the new layer with a white color or black if you and your followers use dark mode.
- Once you’re happy with the results go to File > Export As and export it as a PNG or JPG.
You can see how the image now fits perfectly inside the frame compared to the cropped image from before without losing any of its original value.
3. Using Third-Party Apps
The above method should work for all your photos but if you want to keep the whole process on your phone without having to switch around your photos from your computer you can try third-party apps.
There are numerous third-party apps on Google Play Store and Apple App Store that you can download which would automatically resize your photos to fit into your canvas.
The best free apps to make pictures fit on Instagram without cropping are No Crop & Square, Whitagram, and PicsArt.
No Crop & Square
No Crop & Square for Instagram is an app that gives you different options to edit your photos for Instagram. It has a number of resizing options such as rotation, shrink, and enlarge.
You can also add text and stickers to your images; making it a great app to meet all your needs.
No Crop & Square is only available on Android and can be downloaded for free from the Google Play Store here.
Whitagram
Whitagram is an IOS app that allows you to add white borders and resize your images for Instagram. It is quite similar to the above app and will get the job done to make your images look cleaner without going through a complicated editing process.
Download Whitagram from the Apple Store here.
PicsArt
PicsArt is a popular editing app that is available for both IOS and Android and has a better and unique way of resizing your photos for Instagram. It has a blur effect which can be added to the image borders which is far more attractive than the white or black borders from the previous apps.
To edit your Instagram pictures without cropping using PicsArt follow the below steps:
- Open your photo from your camera roll/gallery.
- Click on the share icon.
- Select PicsArt. This will open your image on PicsArt.
- On the bottom of the screen, select Effects.
- Select Square fit and add a 50% blur with the slider.
The effect works best for landscape photos. This is the kind of result you would get.
Download PicsArt on the Play Store or App Store.
Conclusion
Instagram is a great app for sharing your pictures online but it can be annoying when Instagram crops your image to make it fit in the post. This cropping is poorly done, making it look awkward and not as you intended.
To make your images fit better on Instagram you can use their crop feature, our BunnyPic editor, or third-party apps on your phone to resize your images and make them fit the way you want them to.
How to create a mosaic on Instagram*
October 27, 2017 Web services
Turning your Instagram* into a work of art is easy.
It is enough to evenly cut the photo you have taken.
What kind of mosaic?
Look at what @micahnotfound or @c.syresmith are doing with their accounts. You can do the same.
How to do?
Desktop editors
You can cut a photo into equal parts in any graphics editor such as Photoshop or GIMP. Just open the photo in the editor, divide it into equal square parts and save each part as a separate file.
Photoshop
From the View menu, choose Show→Grid. Go to the Edit menu and open Preferences → Guides, Grid and Slices.
You can divide the image into parts depending on the panorama you want to create. Just enter the desired value in the "Internal division by" field.
Now that your image is divided into parts, select and copy the desired fragments into separate files.
GIMP
Go to the View menu and enable the Show Grid and Snap to Grid options. Then click on "Image", select "Adjust Grid" and split the image into parts.
Select parts of the image one by one, copy and save to separate files using "File" → "Create" → "From Clipboard". Use the hotkeys Ctrl + C and Shift + Ctrl + V to speed up the process.
Web services
Divide a photo into equal parts using web services such as Griddrawingtool.com and Imgonline.com. It's faster and easier.
When the image is cut, you can start uploading. Just remember to upload the bottom right piece of the photo first and the top left piece last.
Mobile Apps
There are many mobile apps that create and upload mosaics to Instagram*. With them, you do not have to bother working in graphic editors.
iOS
Grid-it
This application can cut apart photos you have taken or images in your gallery. True, you will have to upload fragments to Instagram * one at a time.
Download
Price: Free
Grids
Another application for splitting photos into parts.
You won't need to save each snip individually as the app has the built-in ability to send snippets directly to Instagram*. You can choose colors and gradients for the tiles to add variety to your mosaic.
Download
Price: Free
Android
9square
Very simple app to crop photos and upload to Instagram*. You can choose from 3×1, 3×2, 3×3, 3×4, or 3×5 grid sizes.
Download
Price: Free
9Cut
Similar to 9square, absolutely identical in functionality.
Application not found
*Meta Platforms Inc. activity. and its social networks Facebook and Instagram are prohibited in the territory of the Russian Federation.
How to post full size photos on Instagram and is it possible?
Contents:
- 1 Why does Instagram cut photos?
- 2 Life hacks on how to publish a photo in full size
- 3 How to upload a photo without losing quality?
- 4 Ideas for uploading a large photo
- 5 Questions from our readers
Instagram is a social network that focuses on visual content.
Apart from online stores, the lion's share of business accounts on this service belongs to bloggers and photographers. This activity involves the creation of high-quality and attractive content. But the site forces users to play by their own rules and fit into the framework. Let's talk about how to post a photo in full size on Instagram.
Why does Instagram cut photos?
Users of social networks often notice that the quality of photos drops when uploaded to the Internet. Why is this happening? Is it really a conspiracy of the owners of communication services to worsen the quality of life of people? In fact, this is of course not the case. And in 2019, everything is much better in this regard - for posts, the maximum resolution is 1080 by 1920, and for stories 600 by 1067, which is often quite enough for most modern mobile devices. Modern users, moreover, can post images in any orientation, unlike the early days of the social network.
Of course, I can write that this is done in order to save space on the site's servers.
Think for yourself, if there are no restrictions, people will also upload 4k photos, which weigh quite a lot. But these are just my conjectures, there is no official information confirming this idea. Although, of course, lower quality = lighter weight = faster loading. This is the first reason. Let's move on to the second.
What is the feature of Insta? in publication format. They are displayed correctly and uniformly on devices of any year of manufacture and with any operating system. And this is achieved precisely by limiting the uploaded photos.
Life hacks on how to post a photo in full size
Formats, restrictions, resolution, yes, yes, yes. But you can somehow upload a large photo, it’s impossible that people don’t come up with some tricks for this. In fact, this section is here to warn you. There are many articles on the Internet about how to supposedly add an image without losing quality, without cropping it. They mention applications, and the same ones that promise to help you in this situation.
But I don’t really understand why people write about these tools over and over again, because no matter how we process the image, or make a panorama, in the end everything will rest within the framework of the social network itself.
For example, the NoCrop application, which is often recommended in such articles, only helps to fit the photo to the required extension. Of course, when uploading an image processed in this application, its quality will not drop. But since it has fallen to this, it cannot be said that the photo will be uploaded in full size. But, again, why download third-party software for this if the service does it on its own? Therefore, alas, 1080 by 1920 is our limit.
How to upload a photo without quality loss?
As we have already understood, it is unrealistic to fully preserve the quality. But do you need something more than FullHD? Of course, 4k technology is already being introduced into phones, but there are only a few such devices, and it will take some time before a full transition to a new generation of screens.
Therefore, under “How to upload a photo without losing quality on Instagram?” I mean, first of all, maintaining the original orientation, and not adapting to the standard square format.
Let's go to the instructions:
- Open the app and click on the plus icon to open the post creation interface.
- Here we go to the gallery by clicking on the appropriate tab.
- Select an image.
- You can spread two fingers across the screen from its edges to the center to fit the entire image into a post. And you can make it much easier - click on the icon with two arrows. Then the picture will automatically be positioned as we need.
Large photo upload ideas
So, as we understand, there is no way to get around the restrictions of the social network. But what if you post the image as it is? Let's discuss a few ideas that might come in handy.
- Horizontals. If you really need a profile panorama, split it into three photos and put them in a row so that they appear in one line.
It looks quite interesting and unusual - often people do not use horizontal lines, but whole pictures of tiles. But about them in the next paragraph.
- Tiles. Is there a lot of text or, in general, objects and letters are not readable on the post? Make some tiles out of the photo. For example, the most common option is 3 by 3. But some also make a continuous tile for the entire account. But it's quite difficult. When choosing a tile, for example, from nine posts, your creativity rests on a square format.
- Frames. When uploading an image in landscape orientation, the post looks rather strange. Therefore, many people use frames in order to take the maximum available space in the user's feed.
- If none of the options suits you, you can make a collage of several images.
If you look at the situation soberly, then the answer to the question “How to post a photo in full size on Instagram?” one is nothing. There are, of course, many articles on the Internet on this topic.
But most of them cite applications that only fit photos to the format of a social network. That is, Insta does not crop anything, because everything has already been compressed to a photoset.
Questions from our readers
#1. Why does Instagram cut photos?
The resolution limitation allows you not to stretch the image loading time. And it ensures the uniformity of publications, which allows them to be correctly displayed in the feed of users, regardless of what device they use.
#2. Hello! I tried to upload a small photo, it is stretched to a size of 1080 on the larger side. How to make sure that the original size of the photo does not change? For example, I have a photo of 600x700, how can I leave it the same?
Add a white border to it, adjusting the photo in this way to the standard size of Insta.
#3. How to upload a photo in the correct orientation?
Now there are no orientation problems.
