Tips For Sizing Images on Social Media

Facebook, Instagram, and Houzz are all social media sites that businesses can and should be taking advantage of. However each platform has different requirements for optimizing (sizing) the quality of your images you post online. In addition each social media platform treats copyright to the images differently. Let’s take a look at each of the most popular sites.

Facebook

Depending on where the image is located on your wall   Facebook has different size requirements.

1. Cover photo is 820 px wide by 312px for computers,

640px by 360px for smart phones.

1. Your profile image size should be 170-px by 170px.
2. Single image post to your wall: 249px by 476px
3. 2 images with landscape orientation 476px by 237
4. 3 landscape images post to your wall will appear with 1 image on top at 476 by 237, images on the bottom will appear as squared images 237×237 in size.
5. Event Headers images 1920px by 1080px. When displayed will appear as 500 by 262 pixels wide image.

When you post to Facebook all metadata is stripped, copyright info, GPS, camera type and misc info is removed from the image.

Instagram:

Instagram has recently upped their image size allowed to 1080 pixels by 1080 pixels. Your profile image is 152 pixels by 152 pixels. All images are compressed to 72 DPI. Instagram does not take your copyright or remove metadata information.

To improve the quality of the images I post to instagram I will often post images directly from my computer. There are many 3^rd party apps that allow you to post to your instagram account from a desktop or laptop computer. Let’s look at the best ones on the market today:

1. Uplet is a 3^rd party paid app available at the Mac App store. It is a very easy app to use. A drop down panel to easily load images and videos. The app will also allow you to upload multiple photos and videos at once. The app does not have any filters or advanced editing features. Aspect ratio for images should be between 1.9:1 and4:5 at 72 dpi for best looking images
2.  Flume: Is a full featured Instagram client. Only available for a Mac. Free version for basic tools, and a paid version which allows  you to manage multiple accounts, upload images and videos directly from your computer.

Gramblr: Is a free app that will work on Mac or windows based computers. Gramblr requires your Instagram username and password in order to connect with your instagram page. At this point you can only upload one image at a time with Gramblr. You can only post images in Landscape orientation. Gramblr has filters, a cropping tool you can schedule your posts provided your computer is turned on.

You have to be careful with scheduling posts to your instagram account. Instagram is intended to be an app you use with your smart phone .The have deleted people’s accounts for dating posts

Houzz:

Co-founders Adi Tatarko started Houzz as a side project in the midst of their troubled remodeling project. Today the social media remodeling platform, Founded in 2009 Houzz has over 25 million unique visitors per month, 40 million users, 1.5 million professionals with an organic listing or paid listing, 11 million photos posted on the site and over 6 million products listed. 72% of all users are between the age of 25 and 54. Homeowners make up 90% of Houzz users.

• Houzz requires high resolution images for all of your postings. Image size needs to be a minimum of 2400 pixels wide at 300DPI.

• Your iphone or android snapshot will not work here.

• Images with poor lighting or low resolution will be rejected.

• Full Frame DSLR cameras and a tripod work best for meeting image requirements on Houzz.

 

 

While Houzz is a wonderful platform for gathering remodeling ideas for the homeowner and for the professional trying to connect with homeowners I am deeply concerned about Houzz’s policy regarding copyright of images   posted to their site. Once you post images on Houzz’s website you are handing over to Houzz the complete copyright of the images you have created. Houzz can then turn around and do whatever they want with the images. You have lost all control of the images and any potential to sell those images. Houzz is not compensating you for taking the copyright of the images. Yet they are a very profitable company. As of July 2017 their net worth is listed at 4 billion dollars.