Want to know the best Facebook photo sizes? Here’s ALL the info you need to create and size your photos and graphics to look their best on Facebook. I’ve summarized everything on a handy infographic you can pin on Pinterest and embed on your own website. Coming next: best practices to optimize photos for Facebook and file types to use when saving.
Facebook Cover Photo Dimensions
Starting at the top, your Cover Photo will be displayed at 851 pixels (px) by 315px. You have the opportunity to adjust the cropping, but cannot resize the image that you upload or choose from your albums. To ensure you’ll like the results, size in an image editor before uploading.
Also read: Facebook Timeline Cover Photo: Size, Template, Ideas
How to Make a Great Facebook Timeline Cover Photo for 10 Bucks (teaches you how to resize images in a FREE image editor)
Facebook Profile Picture Size
The Facebook Profile Picture is displayed on your Fan Page at 160px square, but must be uploaded at least 180px square. You can also upload a larger image, preferably in a multiple of 180, such as 360, 540, or 720, and Facebook will resize it for you. This may give you better clarity, and will definitely give you a larger image in your Photo Album!
Also read: Facebook Profile Picture Size for Pages to Change April 26
Facebook Fan Page Tab Images (Thumbnails)
The Tab Images, or Thumbnails that appear under your Cover Photo, are 111px wide by 74px high. Keep them simple – maybe just type that expresses a call-to-action.
Also read: How to Create Custom Tab Images for your Facebook Timeline Fan Page
Facebook Fan Page Tab Favicon
A favicon for a web page is a tiny 16px square image that appears in your browser’s address bar. Well, FB Fan Page Tabs also have tiny 16px favicons too! When you click the drop-down arrow at the end of the row of Tab Images, you’ll see the app favicons below the Tab Images, to the left of the text name of the tab. These can be replaced with custom favicons at the time you create a custom tab by following these directions. Woobox tells me you can’t change them on a tab you already have installed.
Facebook Fan Page Tabs
Your Fan Page tab itself can be a single image (sample here). The width of the tab is 810px, and the maximum height for a full-tab image is 1200px. This is the only Facebook image that I’ve found to have a file size restriction, and it’s 400kb. Choose the appropriate compression when saving your jpeg, It won’t upload if larger than 400kb.
For info on how to add custom tabs to your Fan Page, read: Facebook Timeline Fan Page Tabs: Add Your Website to FB
Facebook Wall Photo Size
Photos shared on your wall are displayed as a 403 pixel square image. For best photo quality, size and crop photos for wall posts at least 480 pixel square. 960px is optimal. These will be displayed at 403 pixels square on the Timeline with no cropping made by Facebook.
If you upload a horizontal photo at 403 pixels wide, it will be shown in its entirety. A wider horizontal photo will have the edges cropped off.
In my experience, photos less that 403px wide sometimes get sized up on your wall by Facebook and sometimes don’t! Vertical photos will be cropped top and bottom to a square shape, but the placement of the crop can be adjusted once it’s on the wall.
Facebook Photo Viewer Photo Size
Photos you’ve uploaded will appear in the Photo Viewer, or lightbox, at the size you uploaded them, up to 960px x 960px. The maximum Facebook photo size for upload and download is 2048px square. If you upload a larger image, Facebook will reduce it so the longest side is 2048px, but it will appear in the Photo Viewer no larger than 960px on the longest side. It can be downloaded at the full size, however.
WARNING: Photos you upload to Facebook can be downloaded by anyone you’ve allowed to view them in your permissions. Any images could thus be reused, even though this is a copyright infringement (unless you have given permission). How to Report Claims of Intellectual Property Infringement
You’ve also allowed Facebook to distribute your images according to their Terms of Service:
For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
I recommend you NOT upload your professional images at high resolution unless you have a specific reason to do so (i.e. you want fans to download printable images of an event, for example) and also suggest you watermark your images.
Facebook Milestone or Highlighted Post Photo Size
Milestones and Highlighted Posts span both columns of your Timeline, and are displayed on your Wall at 843px wide by whatever height you choose, up to 403px. I like uploading a variety of heights – skinny ones like the one below break up space on the Wall, but become pretty small in the News Feed.
Milestone photos less than 843px wide will be centered in the space.
Link Thumbnail Size
Dimensions of the link thumbnail: 90px x 90px, but caries with shape of photo. This is the small icon that appears with a link on your wall. If you’re posting the link through Facebook, and the linked page includes photos, you can use the arrows to choose the desired thumbnail, or check the box for no thumbnail.
Be sure to check out and bookmark the Infographic: Facebook Photo Size Dimensions.
Know others who would find this post on Facebook photo sizes helpful? Please share! And sign up for my mailing list to get great tips like this in your inbox every Friday.
Love this explanation; you made it so simple and clear to us. I will use this information for sure! From now on, I know where to find you! :)
Great Olga, welcome aboard!
Love this article!! All those pesky details that I can never remember are right here in one place. Definitely book marking this page!!!
Welcome Ronae, I’m glad you found this useful. Thanks for your comment!
Great information! Love what you share! You even answered some questions I didn’t know I had! Your Rock! Keep up the good work.
Thanks so much Katrina, I’m always happy to hear such positive comments :)
This is a great reference article. Bookmarking it for future use! YOU rock. x0x
Thank you Norma! I’m glad you found it helpful!
Thanks so much for summarizing all this in one place Louise! Got you bookmarked for later use.
You’re welcome Helena! Thanks for checking us out!
Just adding my thanks to those that came before. I appreciate the straight-forward explanation, and the matching pictures help for visualization and reference!
Awesome, thank you Jen, your comment is appreciated!
Another great post, Louise. Many thanks for this useful information!
Hey, thanks. This is very useful. Your site has a lot of good stuff.
Thanks Craig! Enjoy.
Hi Louise,
I had this on my 2-do list to gather all these dimensions in one place. Now I don’t have to! Thanks a million!
Anne :)
Hi Anne! Great to see you here :)
I’m glad you enjoyed this! Thanks for your comment.
Thanks for the beautiful post! I’ve bookmarked it.
It really helped me to post high quality photos on my website’s facebook fan page.
Thanks for bookmarking, Akhtar!
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Perfect – even more info than what I was seeking – thanks so much for this post!
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You’re welcome Evelyn! Glad you found it useful.
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Most photos don’t show the square. I use Ms Office Picture Mgr. to resize and compress photos. I guess compressing to 448×336 (pre-set for web pages) isn’t sufficient. When I’ve added text to a photo at bottom or top it sometimes gets cut off. Is this an optimal size or 403×403?
Any square 403 or larger will work. But the non-square image is only cut off on your Timeline – it should show in its entirety in the news feeds of your fans. The square image will be larger in the news feeds tho.
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Thank you for taking the time to post this information. It was extremely helpful!
Glad to hear it, Rob!
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This is great. I’m going to have to make some templates using these guidelines. That way I only have to place my image in and voila it’s ready to go. Thanks for the info :)
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I’m glad you found it useful, Te!
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Very useful advice. For those processing their own photos in something like Photoshop or Lightroom, I’d also strongly recommend that any ‘sharpening’ they apply to the image should only be done AFTER applying the image sizing recommended above. If it is a photo that you need for printing, screen size and Facebook size, save the original unsharpened at original size in a lossless format (not .jpeg!). Open the original image and resize to the output size required and then sharpen for that size. For Facebook, save as an 8 bit (if you normally process in 16bit) .jpeg image. Why do this? On Facebook, lots of beautiful images are spoiled because they have been sharpened at print output resolution and then rendered by Facebook to the size they need.
Awesome, thanks for the great tip, Mike!
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hi but i didnt get why there\s alot of pixels when i upload my photo on my facebook fan page i didnt get how can i fix this :(
I don’t understand your question. Can you give a link to the post you’re referring to?
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well this is the photo
http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=489441607764172&set=a.185941328114203.37210.185924014782601&type=1&theater
and there’s alot of pixels just dont know how to fix it
You mean how it shows up on the gray background? I’m not even sure how you did that – my photos open the photo viewer (so they’re on black).
Louise Myers recently posted..7 Ways to Post a Link on Facebook
Thank you for the nice article. Hare Krishna.
May God bless you with His devotion.
yours in Krishna’s service
Mahaprabhu Caitanya Das
You’re welcome, and thank YOU for such a lovely comment!
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One of the best way for a creative profile picture is to convert your pic to cartoon. I have done it from fiverr.com.
It has come so good. I suggest it for you also.
That could be fun for a personal page, but I don’t recommend cartoons for a business page (except in limited circumstances where it may be appropriate – like the business does cartoons, or kid stuff). Showing your face is a better way to help people get to know you, and then trust you.
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Recently facebook has instituted a new event layout with the event picture on top like a cover photo on the timeline. Do you know what the correct dimensions of that new photo area on the events are? Thank you!
Hi Tom! The most recent size I found is: 714 x 264.
I don’t use events myself so I hope this works! Let me know if you give it a try.
Best of luck!
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This site is very useful for Facebook, like a first aid. We glad about u Louise.
How kind of you Ali! Welcome.
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