Common Image Dimensions Cheat Sheet (Web, Social, Video, Print)

The short version: web share images are built around 1200×630, phone feeds around 1080-wide portrait, full-screen vertical video at 1080×1920, HD video at 1920×1080, and printed photos at inches × PPI (300 the usual target). The tables below split what platforms actually publish from what the industry merely repeats, and the print section shows the arithmetic.

TOC

1. Four terms that get mixed up

2. Web

3. Social media

4. Video

5. Print: pixels = inches × PPI

6. Checking a file you already have

Throughout, each row is labeled:

• [Official] — published by the platform or standards body itself, checked for this article.

• [Convention] — widely used numbers that no standard publishes. Treat as safe defaults, not requirements.

• [Example] — an illustration of the arithmetic, not a spec.

Four terms that get mixed up

Aspect ratio is the one property that survives a resize: a 16:9 frame stays 16:9 whether it holds 1920×1080 pixels or 3840×2160. Our guide to common aspect ratios covers the familiar formats and where each one is used.

PPI and DPI are not interchangeable. Adobe puts it plainly: DPI measures physical ink dots in print, PPI measures pixels in the digital original — "DPI as the print output, and PPI as the digital input." The U.S. federal digitization guidelines (FADGI) went further in their 2023 edition and replaced "dpi" with "ppi" throughout, to keep the two measures apart. Vendors still label settings "dpi" out of habit: Epson's scan guide gives resolution in dpi while describing the pixels it captures.

One trap follows: a file's pixel count is fixed; the PPI value stored alongside it is only a label for intended print scale. Calling an 800-pixel image "300 dpi" does not add pixels. The real density at any print size is pixels ÷ inches, which is the calculation at the end of this article.

Web

Why 1200×630: it clears every consumer's minimum — Meta's own floor for link-share images is 600×315 — and the few pixels of difference between consumers (LinkedIn's 1200×627, Meta's 1.91:1) never show at preview scale. Ship 1200×630 and keep the text in the center band.

Social media

Checked against each platform's own help pages on 2026-10-09. Anything the platform does not publish is marked as convention.

Instagram

Facebook

X (formerly Twitter)

LinkedIn

Pinterest

YouTube

Video

Pixel counts for orientation: 1920×1080 = 2,073,600 (2.07 MP); 3840×2160 = 8,294,400 (8.29 MP); 1080×1920 = 2,073,600 (same pixels as 1080p, turned 90°).

Print: pixels = inches × PPI

Print has no fixed pixel size. It has paper sizes and a density you choose. The whole calculation is:

pixels on the long side = inches on that side × PPI

Worked examples at 300 PPI (the standard density for quality photo printing, per Adobe's PPI guide):

A4 is defined in millimetres, so convert first (25.4 mm = 1 in), then multiply:

210 mm ÷ 25.4 = 8.268 in      297 mm ÷ 25.4 = 11.693 in
8.268 × 300 = 2480.3 → 2480    11.693 × 300 = 3507.9 → 3508

Run the arithmetic backwards and PPI becomes a check: a 2400×3000 file placed at 8×10 in is exactly 300 PPI (2400 ÷ 8 = 300). The same file at 16×20 in would be 150 PPI — fewer pixels per inch, visible softness at close range.

How much density is enough? The FADGI technical guidelines for cultural heritage scanning set performance levels at 300 ppi for basic capture and 400 ppi for the top tier, and note that an image captured at 400 ppi renders at true size when displayed or printed at 400 ppi. Epson's scan guidance puts everyday numbers at 96–200 dpi for screen use and 200–300 dpi for print and OCR. For commercial photo printing, 300 PPI is the standard target — a benchmark, not a universal requirement; what actually decides quality is pixels ÷ inches at the size you print. For archival document work, the FADGI top tier runs 400.

Checking a file you already have

1. Read its pixel dimensions. File properties on Windows/macOS, or open it in any image viewer: the width × height in pixels is the raw truth.

2. Get the ratio. Divide width by height and reduce (1600÷900 = 1.778 → 16:9). The ratio tells you which crop family the file belongs to before any platform touches it.

3. Compute real PPI for a target print size. Pixels ÷ inches — but only when the shapes match. A 1200×1800 photo (2:3) on a 4×6 in sheet (also 2:3) is a clean 300 PPI both ways. On an 8×10 in sheet (4:5) the two shapes disagree, so you must choose: fit the whole photo inside the frame (6.67×10 in, uniform 180 PPI, side margins); fill the frame (scale to 8×12 in, crop 2 in off the height, uniform 150 PPI); or distort it to exactly 8×10 — the only case where the two directions disagree (150 across, 180 down), which is what stretching looks like. Scaled correctly, an image has the same density across and down; two different numbers only appear when the shapes are forced to disagree.

4. Ignore the PPI label when judging sharpness. It records intended scale, not content. Only the pixel count and the print size together determine what the reader sees.

Step 2 gets its own treatment in the calculation guide with worked examples, which reduces a pair of dimensions with the greatest common divisor and shows how to back out the side you are missing.

Sources