Social Media Image Dimensions

Preparing Cinema Stills and Event Photos for Sharing

Knowing the target dimensions is only half the job. How you crop, export and compress an image decides whether a festival portrait or a film still looks sharp in a feed or turns soft and blotchy. A few habits make a noticeable difference.

Crop with the subject in mind

Wide cinema stills are usually composed for a cinematic frame, so forcing them into a square or a 4:5 portrait can cut off faces or important background detail. Before cropping, decide what the picture is really about: an actor's expression, a dancer mid-step, the lights of a temple festival. Keep that element comfortably inside the frame, and leave some breathing room at the edges, because several platforms trim previews or overlay buttons and captions near the borders. For group shots from weddings or stage events, a landscape crop often works better than squeezing everyone into a square.

Export at the right size, not larger

Uploading a huge file straight from the camera does not guarantee better quality. Platforms recompress images, and very large uploads can lose more detail in that process. Resize to the recommended width yourself, use the sRGB colour profile so skin tones and saris keep their colours, and save as a high-quality JPEG. PNG is better kept for graphics with text, such as event posters or title cards.

Watch text and small details

If you add a caption, credit or logo directly onto an image, keep the text large and away from the edges so it stays readable on phone screens. Fine patterns such as embroidery or crowded stage lighting can show compression artefacts, so check the result on a mobile device before posting widely.

Credit and respect

When sharing photos taken by others, name the photographer and ask permission where needed, especially for private family events. Our contributors page explains how work is credited here, and you can browse the albums to see how different crops suit different kinds of occasions.