What is aspect ratio?

An aspect ratio is the proportion between an image's or video's width and height, such as square, vertical or widescreen, written as two numbers like 1:1.

Aspect ratio affects how your content looks in the feed. If an image or video does not match what a network expects, it may be cropped awkwardly, shown with black bars, or take up less screen space than it could. Getting it right helps your posts look polished and grab attention.

Common shapes include square, portrait, vertical full-screen and widescreen landscape. Vertical video suits TikTok, Reels, YouTube Shorts and Stories, while widescreen suits regular YouTube videos. Feed posts on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn often display portrait or square images well. Recommended sizes vary by network and change over time.

Shoot with some extra space around your subject so you can crop for different networks later. Keep important text and faces away from the edges, where they might be cut off or covered by buttons. Preview your post before publishing to check the crop.

Example

A home bakery films its cake decorating videos vertically for Reels, then crops a square version of the final shot for its Facebook Page.