How to Modify Your Image to Fit on Your Social Media Site

Calculating your photo aspect ratio for publications.

The aspect ratio is the mathematic calculation of the difference in the width and height of the image. The first number before the colon is the width and the number following the colon is the height. For instance, a 16:9 aspect ratio for YouTube could describe a picture that is 16 inches wide by 9 inches high. Instagram likes photos to be 4:5 or square at 1:1. For example: a picture that has an aspect ratio of 4:3 might be a picture 4 inches wide by 3 inches high.

But what would an aspect ratio mean for a picture you’ve taken that you want to put up on a website? What are you supposed to do with these numbers and how would you ever change your image from one aspect ratio to another without your head exploding? This seems frightfully abstract. You just want to get your darn picture up with the text you’ve written. You aren’t an Astro physicist specializing in rocket science.

Here’ some help. If you have these software tools, you can change your aspect ratio and it and it won’t split your brain in trying to figure it out.

Two tools will do the job.

1. Adobe Photoshop is the primary key to managing your image re-sizing. For this article, I only have Photoshop CS5. If you use Adobe Cloud software, it will have some more advanced features but these more basic instructions will still help you accomplish your task.