4 Tips for the Best Quality Instagram Photos

You’ve captured breathtaking images of the utmost quality and you’re ready to share them to your Instagram profile. Now’s your chance to showcase your work. But after uploading your favorite images you notice that the quality has significantly diminished. If you’re frustrated with altered images after uploading them to Instagram, read on to learn some helpful tips for finding the best Instagram export settings when using the app.

Follow Instagram’s Recommended Guidelines

When you share a photo to Instagram, no matter what device you use, you should have aspect ratios between 1.91:1 and 4:5. Your photos will always be cropped to fit at 1080 pixels wide. Keep in mind that all photos uploaded to Instagram are automatically adjusted with an image compression algorithm. This allows images to load as fast as possible because an image with a smaller file size means that there is less to download.

Utilize Editing Apps Beforehand

Apps that allow you to edit your photos beforehand, such as Lightroom, Dark Table or Apple Photos, let you add effects to your photos such as sharpness, crop, quality, colour space, image sizing, and meta. These options allow you to edit and set features of each photo before sharing to Instagram. It’s recommended to always crop to 4:5 as this turns out to be the largest pixel size that you can upload, therefore it takes up the most size in your Instagram feed and stands out to viewers the best.

Image Sizing

Export your photos at 1080px wide for the best Instagram export settings. This ensures that if your photo is resized or squished by an algorithm that is out of your control, it will still look great.

Instagram Stories

Don’t forget about updating your Instagram stories! When uploading to this feature on the app, keep in mind that the dimensions for Insta stories are 1080 pixels wide by 1920 pixels tall, so your story size should have an aspect ratio of 9:16. Before uploading your story, be sure that that you edit it to have the right dimensions beforehand for optimal quality.