Resize an image to 1080 × 1080

Open any picture above and the editor turns it into an exact 1080 × 1080 square. If it is not square already, a square frame opens over it with everything outside shaded; slide it to the part you want and apply. Or keep the whole picture and let the editor add a border to make up the square.

How much of the picture a square keeps

A square crop always cuts the long side down to the length of the short one. How much that removes depends only on the shape you start with:

When the editor finishes, its size panel reports the exact share kept — 67% for our 3:2 sample photo — so the number is never a surprise.

Choosing which square

The frame opens centred and as large as the picture allows, so it can only slide one way: left and right on a landscape picture, up and down on a portrait one. Drag inside it to move it. Drawing outside it starts a new frame, still square, if you want a tighter crop than the full height.

The faint lines inside the frame divide it into thirds. Putting an eye line or a horizon on one of them, rather than dead centre, is the old photographer’s rule and still a good default. When the frame is where you want it, press Apply crop; the result is resized to exactly 1080 × 1080 with the Lanczos3 filter.

Changed your mind after applying? Move the crop brings the frame back over the whole picture, where you left it.

A square without cropping anything

Switch to Fit the whole image, with padding and nothing is cut. The picture is scaled until its long side is 1080 pixels and centred, and the rest of the square is filled with a colour — white unless you pick another. A 3:2 photo becomes a 1080 × 720 picture with a 180-pixel band above and below it.

A flat border costs almost nothing to store. Our sample as a 1080 × 1080 WebP at quality 80 measured 210 KB cropped and 126 KB padded: the padded file holds a third fewer picture pixels, and the border adds next to nothing.

If your image is smaller than 1080 pixels

A 640-pixel avatar or a small web image has to be enlarged to reach 1080, by a factor of 1.69 in that case. The editor does it, and its size panel says so, because enlarging only spreads the existing detail over more pixels: the square will look softer than the original. If a site accepts smaller images, uploading the original size is just as good. The resampling guide shows what enlarging does and does not do.

How big the file comes out

Measured on our sample landscape, cropped to the centre square:

The square made from the full-resolution original is the smaller file, even though it looks at least as sharp. The likely reason: each of its pixels averages many more pixels of the original, which smooths away sensor noise and the old JPEG’s blocking — detail that costs bytes and that nobody wanted. If you have the original file, start from it.

Where 1080 × 1080 is asked for

• Square social posts. It is Instagram’s square post size; the Instagram page covers its other shapes. LinkedIn accepts it as an image post too; see the LinkedIn page.
• Profile pictures. Most sites show these as circles. A circle drawn inside a square covers 78.5% of it, so the four corners are hidden: keep the face well inside the middle.
• Product and listing photos, where a grid of identical squares looks tidy whatever shape the originals were. Padding with white gives the familiar catalogue look.

Questions about 1080 × 1080

More image tools

Every one of these is the same editor, opened for a different job — and all of them run on your device.

• Resize to 1200 × 630The Open Graph size for link previews.
• Instagram resizerPosts, stories and Reels at Instagram’s current shapes.
• Resize an imageChange the pixel dimensions with Lanczos3, Catmull-Rom or Mitchell.
• Crop an imageTrim to what matters, freeform or to a fixed ratio.
• Compress an imageShrink a photo for the web, an email or an upload form.

Or start from the full editor, which does all of it at once.