Best Export Settings for Instagram by Placement (2026)

Published October 31, 2026 · Daniel Tello · RevelRaw

That's the file to create when you've finished an edit, the grid preview looks right on your Mac, and you're about to send a full-resolution version to your phone and hope Instagram shrinks it kindly. It rarely does. A camera-sized file gives the app extra scaling and compression to do, and that's where skin shifts, edges go crunchy, and a careful crop turns into something looser or tighter than you composed. Treat Instagram as several canvases that share one practical rule: export the crop you meant at the size that canvas uses.

This page is the placement-by-placement reference and the troubleshooting table. For the reasoning behind each setting, crop first and quality by eye, read our Instagram photo export settings guide; for getting the finished file from your Mac to your phone without a second round of compression, see the Mac-to-upload path.

Which Export Settings Fit Each Instagram Placement?

Start with the portrait feed row unless your composition says otherwise. RevelRaw's Instagram export preset is JPEG, 1080 × 1350, sRGB, 90%, because a 4:5 frame takes up useful vertical space in the feed. If you composed square or wide, don't force it into that preset just because it's the default.

The width is the anchor. Instagram's photo size help says a photo between 320 and 1080 pixels wide keeps its original resolution when its aspect ratio falls between 1.91:1 and 3:4, which at 1080 pixels wide means heights from 566 to 1440 pixels. A wider photo is sized down to 1080, a narrower one is enlarged to 320, and a ratio outside that range is cropped to fit, so an oversized master and a tiny thumbnail both hand Instagram resampling work you could have done yourself.

Read the table by placement first, not by whatever dimensions your editor last used. A square travel frame stays square, a wide interior stays wide, and a vertical portrait gets the taller feed crop. If you're planning a carousel or a mixed grid, the Instagram growth agency Gainsty has a guide to compare Instagram post format sizes. Decide the placement before you crop, because changing it after export usually means cropping again from a file that's already been sized down.

Why Is 4:5 the Default and Not 3:4?

Instagram accepts a feed photo as tall as 3:4 (1080 × 1440), so 4:5 isn't the limit; it's a choice. It's the ratio most editors and presets default to, it fills a lot of the phone screen, and a 4:5 crop is easy to reuse wherever else a portrait post is expected. If a photo was composed for 3:4, export it at 1080 × 1440 instead. Instagram's own guidance treats both the same way.

Working rule: crop for the placement, size to 1080 wide, and let quality 90 do its job. A bigger JPEG isn't a sharper post once the app scales it again.

Use JPEG for photographs. PNG is accepted, but on a normal photo it mostly creates a larger file with no visible gain after posting. Save PNG for flat graphics, hard type, and frames where sharp graphic edges matter more than photographic detail.

Don't export a full-resolution camera conversion and call it an Instagram file. Keep that master for print, your website, and future crops. For posting, match one row above to the crop you already composed, export once at that size, and upload a file that needs no rescue work from the app.

Which Color, Quality and Metadata Settings Should You Use?

Size gets the file accepted cleanly. Color, quality, and metadata decide whether the posted photo still looks like your edit and carries the information you intended.

Convert to sRGB, Don't Just Tag It

A file exported in Adobe RGB or Display P3 can look rich on a wide-gamut Mac display, then look dull or shifted once it's treated as sRGB downstream. Reds go flat, greens lose separation, and skin can take on a tint you didn't grade. The fix is to convert the data to sRGB on export, not assign an sRGB label to pixels that are still in another space. Instagram doesn't document a color space, so this is practitioner advice: sRGB is the space phones and browsers assume when they aren't told otherwise.

That's not an argument against keeping wider-gamut masters. A 16-bit TIFF in Adobe RGB is a perfectly good print file. It just isn't the file to post. If you're refining the edit itself before export, our guide to photo editing choices for Instagram posts covers the look decisions that need to survive this conversion.

Why Quality 90?

Instagram publishes no JPEG quality number, so this is our recommendation, not a platform rule. At around 80, detailed foliage, hair, and fabric can start to soften or break into visible artifacts, especially after Instagram compresses the file again. At 100, you're mostly adding bytes that don't survive posting. Quality 90 sits in the useful middle for photographs: small enough to upload cleanly and detailed enough that texture still reads at phone size.

• JPEG for photographs: your default for portraits, travel, food, and anything with continuous tone.
• PNG for graphics: worth its larger size when the frame is flat color, hard type, or an infographic that would smear as JPEG.
• HEIF for your own devices: fine on an iPhone or Mac, but JPEG is the safer file to hand to Instagram.

RevelRaw exports JPEG, PNG, 8- or 16-bit TIFF and HEIF, in sRGB, Display P3 or Adobe RGB, and can write your name and copyright into the file. Having those formats available doesn't make them interchangeable for posting: TIFF belongs to your archive and print workflow, HEIF to your own devices, and JPEG to Instagram.

Keep Credit, Remove Location on Purpose

Metadata is a choice, not a default you ignore. Keep copyright and creator fields when you want them attached to a downloaded file and visible to anyone who inspects it. Remove GPS location when a photo reveals a private home, a client site, a workshop, or a place you'd rather not broadcast. In RevelRaw, the export sheet's Location option removes GPS, and the Social and Web presets remove it by default.

Check metadata last, right before you click export, because it's easy to change your mind about a location tag after the color and sizing are done. One pass, four checks: sRGB, JPEG, about 90, copyright in and GPS out, unless the frame is a graphic that needs PNG.

How Do You Export a Feed Photo Step by Step?

Say you've got a finished RAW edit on screen at full camera resolution, the horizon's straight, and the colors finally match the shoot. Don't export yet. Run these seven steps in order, because each one protects the next.

1. Leave output sharpening until the crop is final. Sharpening pixels you're about to discard wastes the decision. Judge edge detail on the frame that will post, at the size it will post.
2. Crop to the aspect from your table row. For most feed work that's 4:5. Put the subject where you want it, check the edges for half-cut hands, signs, and horizons, and make sure nothing important sits so close to the border that a thumbnail makes it unreadable.
3. Resize the width to 1080 pixels. A 4:5 crop lands at 1080 × 1350. The common slip happens here: resizing before cropping. Do it the other way around and you'll either export the wrong height or crop a file that's already been reduced.
4. Convert the color space to sRGB. Don't leave Adobe RGB or Display P3 attached and hope the conversion downstream matches your screen. Check skin, saturated clothing, and deep green foliage right after conversion, since those show a shift first.
5. Export JPEG at quality 90. Drop toward 85 only if the file is getting uncomfortably large. Skip 100, since Instagram compresses again and the extra bytes don't buy visible detail on a phone.
6. Set metadata deliberately. Write copyright into the file when you want credit to travel with a download. Strip GPS when the shoot location should stay private, particularly for client interiors, homes, and small workshops that aren't public landmarks.
7. Open the exported file at phone size. Don't judge it at 200 percent on a large monitor. Check faces for crunchy sharpening, type for legibility, skies for banding, and horizons for a tilt you missed while working large.

The fastest quality check is boring. Open the actual exported JPEG, not your editing preview, and look at it the size your audience will.

Three slips account for most disappointing posts. Resizing before the crop locks in the wrong proportions. Exporting the RAW conversion at camera dimensions hands the scaling decision to Instagram. Uploading a PNG of a normal photograph inflates the file while the posted result still goes through the same compression.

A correct file is easy to spot in Finder before you ever open the app: a JPEG, 1080 pixels wide, in sRGB, and modest enough in size that it uploads without fuss. If one of those is off, fix it in the editor now. It's a ten-second correction here and a repost later.

What Sizes Do Stories, Reels and Reel Covers Need?

Vertical publishing isn't a taller version of a feed post. It's a different canvas with interface controls over the edges, a separate cover crop, and no patience for a composition that was designed for 4:5.

Instagram's Reel help gives the official numbers: a Reel can be anywhere from 1.91:1 to 9:16, should be at least 720 pixels and 30 frames per second, and its cover photo is recommended at 420 × 654 pixels, a 1:1.55 ratio. The same page says you can't edit the cover after uploading, and that the Media quality setting Upload at highest quality makes the app always upload Reels at the highest quality. A full-screen 9:16 frame is usually built at 1080 × 1920, the same width as a feed photo.

Three Canvases, Three Cropping Decisions

• Story still: build it at 1080 × 1920, with faces, product details, and type kept away from the top and bottom edges where Instagram's controls sit.
• Reel playback: export video as MP4 or MOV at that same full-screen vertical size, so the app isn't reframing your footage on upload.
• Reel cover: design the smaller cover as its own crop, with the face and title in the middle, not borrowed from the top of the vertical frame.

Take one travel portrait through all three. In the feed at 4:5, you've got the subject, some sky, and enough ground to anchor the frame. Stretch that same composition toward 9:16 and something has to give, usually the sky above the head or the street detail below the feet. Decide in the editor which loss serves the photo, and move the crop up or down deliberately instead of accepting a center crop.

Then look at the cover. It's squarer than the playback frame, so a title placed for the full vertical video can sit outside the cover crop entirely. Make the cover from your 9:16 master still, but compose it for its own proportions, with the subject's eyes and any words comfortably inside the frame. Since the cover can't be changed once the Reel is up, check it at phone size before you post.

Don't Let the App Reframe for You

Automatic reframing is the expensive shortcut. It doesn't know that the hands matter more than the ceiling, or that the sign behind your subject completes the story. Export a second crop from the same master and keep the original composition saved separately for later use.

That's also why wide material needs planning before it goes vertical. If you're breaking a broad scene across posts instead, our walkthrough on posting panoramas without losing the composition covers that separate problem. For a single vertical placement, commit to the tall crop yourself.

Keep type in the middle band of the frame: headlines, dates, and faces in the center, the top and bottom treated as background room rather than information space. A beautiful title under a progress bar isn't a title.

Save feed, vertical, and cover as three files, not one file posted three ways. Name them by placement when you export, and you'll never upload the cover where the Story master belonged.

Why Does an Instagram Upload Look Soft, Dull or Get Rejected?

Most bad posts aren't bad edits. They're good edits exported at the wrong width, in the wrong color space, or for the wrong canvas, and each failure points back to one setting you can change.

Start with the soft-after-upload case, since it's the one people blame on their lens. If your file was wider than 1080 pixels, Instagram scaled it and compressed it again, and fine detail paid for both passes. Re-export the same edit at the correct width before you touch the sharpening slider. Adding sharpening to an oversized file just gives the resampling more edge artifacts to mangle.

The blurry enlargement is the opposite mistake. A thumbnail, a screenshot of your own edit, or a small preview pulled from a messaging app has too few pixels to fill the frame. Go back to the master edit and export at full posting size. There's no setting that invents detail a tiny file never had.

Color, Format, and the Stuck Upload

Dull color is a shorter diagnosis. Check the color space on the exported file, not the working space in your editor. If Adobe RGB or P3 is still attached, convert to sRGB and compare the two exports side by side at phone size before reposting.

If you publish through a scheduling tool rather than the app, its own limits apply. Zoho's media guidelines for its Zoho Social scheduler list an 8 MB cap for Instagram images, PNG, JPEG or GIF for posts but JPEG only for Stories, the same 1.91:1 to 3:4 range for posts, and 9:16 as the recommended Story ratio. That gives you three checks in one pass, format, size and aspect, before you start blaming your connection.

Video has its own version of the stuck upload. Confirm the file is MP4 or MOV, and if a Story or Reel publishes without the sound it should have, StreamGen, a clip-editing tool for streamers, has a troubleshooting guide to restore sound on Instagram Stories. Confirm the export itself carries audio first, and don't re-encode a good file chasing a playback setting.

One diagnostic habit: check width, aspect, color space, and file size on the exported file before you blame the phone, the app, or the edit.

Banding in a sky is a gradient problem, not a size problem. Raise JPEG quality toward 90 and add a little grain before export, which breaks up the smooth steps that compression turns into visible bands. Posting a much larger file doesn't fix it, since the gradient still gets compressed at the end.

Separate the fixes that are a simple re-export from the ones that need new work. Width, quality, color space, and format are re-exports of the same edit. An unexpected crop or a cut-off Story subject needs a new crop from the master. Knowing which kind you're dealing with saves you from re-editing a photo that was never the problem.

How Do You Save Instagram Export Presets?

There isn't one best file for Instagram. There's a right file per placement, and a preset is how you stop rebuilding it from memory after every shoot.

Save your default by name. Feed Portrait holds JPEG, the 4:5 size, sRGB, quality 90, copyright in, and GPS out. Add Feed Square or another preset only if you compose for those frames, not to have a tidy list. A preset you never use is just another wrong row to click by accident.

• Same image going to Stories: add a separate vertical JPEG from the master, cropped for the tall frame.
• Image becoming a Reel: export the MP4 or MOV for playback and the small cover JPEG as two files with two names.
• A whole shoot to post: settle the crop and settings on one frame, then apply the same export across the set using the approach in our guide to batch editing photos for a consistent Instagram set.

Keep a full-size master for print and web, and never overwrite it with an Instagram JPEG. The posting file is a delivery copy. Six months from now you may want that frame for a print, a wider crop, or a platform that didn't exist when you posted it, and a 1080-wide JPEG won't get you there.

RevelRaw ships Instagram export presets for 4:5 and 1:1. The 4:5 one is the JPEG, 1080 × 1350, sRGB, 90% row above, and like every RevelRaw export preset it keeps the crop's shape and never enlarges. Any editor that sets the same size, format, color space, and quality produces the same file; the preset is just the decision made once, so you don't make a worse one in a hurry at midnight. RevelRaw edits stills only, so the Reel itself comes from your video editor, but the Story still and the Reel cover can come from the same RAW. It requires macOS 26 or later on an Apple M1 or later Mac.

If you want to test the workflow on one real photo first, the first full-quality export is free. Pick a finished edit with skin tones and fine detail in it, since that combination shows color shifts and softness faster than a simple graphic frame.

Do this one now. Crop your next feed photo to 4:5, run the Feed Portrait preset, open the exported JPEG at phone size, and check the faces and edges. If it holds up there, post it, and keep the preset so the next shoot starts from a decision instead of a guessed quality slider.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best export settings for an Instagram post?

JPEG, sRGB, quality around 90, 1080 pixels wide: 1080 × 1350 for a 4:5 portrait, 1080 × 1080 for a square or 1080 × 566 for a 1.91:1 landscape. Instagram keeps photos 320 to 1080 pixels wide at their original resolution when the ratio is between 1.91:1 and 3:4, and sizes wider photos down to 1080.

What size should an Instagram Story be?

Export a separate 1080 × 1920 JPEG at 9:16, with faces and text kept away from the top and bottom edges where Instagram's controls sit. Don't reuse the 4:5 feed file: it won't fill the vertical screen the way you composed it.

What size is an Instagram Reel cover?

Instagram recommends 420 × 654 pixels, a 1:1.55 ratio. Make it as its own crop, with the subject and any title in the middle, and check it before posting: Instagram's help page says the cover can't be edited after the Reel is uploaded.

Why do my photos look blurry or dull on Instagram?

Usually the exported file, not the edit. A photo wider than 1080 pixels is sized down and recompressed, one under 320 pixels wide is enlarged, and a file left in Adobe RGB or Display P3 can look muted once it's shown as sRGB. Re-export at 1080 wide, in sRGB, at JPEG quality around 90.

Can RevelRaw export Instagram-ready photos?

Yes. RevelRaw has Instagram export presets for 4:5 and 1:1; the 4:5 preset is JPEG, 1080 × 1350, sRGB, 90%, and the export sheet can add your copyright and remove GPS location. It edits stills only, not Reel video, and requires macOS 26 or later on an Apple M1 or later Mac. The first full-quality export is free.

Crop your next photo to 4:5, export it with RevelRaw's Instagram preset at JPEG, 1080 × 1350, sRGB, 90%, and check the file at phone size before you post. RevelRaw edits and exports your RAW files on your Mac, with no account and nothing uploaded, so you can make that first full-quality export free and see exactly what Instagram will receive. It requires macOS 26 or later on an Apple M1 or later Mac.