The Maximum Size of a Photo in Facebook

Posted by Noah | Filed under technology

UPDATE: This post is a bit old, Facebook seems to have increased the size for some photos for some people to 720px. However it seems not everyone is viewing this new larger content, or perhaps not everyon’es new uploads get sized to 720px. I’d hold off on assuming 720px for a few more weeks. Of course if you size to 720px and upload and they resize to 604px all you lose out on is a little sharpness.

I was wondering what the maximum size of an image in Facebook is, and although I couldn’t find a definitive answer it would seem the largest dimension be it either horizontal or vertical is 604 pixels.

facebook-picture-size

So if you want to get picky about re-sizing your images for better quality and watching for artifacts you should shoot for 604 pixels either wide or tall.

As for the actual file size, I did a lot of tests and it seems (as of July 28, 3008) that Facebook re-compresses your images regardless of what their original size might be, this equates to about a 50% quality setting in most apps but there is no size it won’t re-compress, even if it makes the file bigger.

Mike makes a good point, you can find out more in his Facebook Gallery

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Permalink | July 27th, 2008

9 Responses to “The Maximum Size of a Photo in Facebook”

  1. Dan K Says:
    October 18th, 2008 at 12:48 am

    Gee thanks Noah, I’ve been wondering about this for a while. Now I can size and crop my images to show what I want given the maximum size.

  2. AzzQim Says:
    January 11th, 2009 at 5:03 pm

    Well it’s easy, just upload any photo and then see to what size FB resizes them. Yes, correct answer is 604 px for the longest axis, and I always resize photos in Photoshop since it gives much better result (crappy FB algorythm!) Then I downloaded the picture and compared it to original in PS (using difference blend mode) and it was all black, so FB doesn’t mess with the pictures if they’re max 604 px big but I didn’t try this for all size, my pictures are around 0,5 MB anyway.

  3. Noah Says:
    March 4th, 2009 at 9:52 am

    You’ve had better luck than I AzzQim. Facebook re-compressed even my smallest photos, when I did my test back in July 2008. Perhaps I’ll re-run my tests to see what they’re doing now. Originally I used images of noise, not “every day” pictures.

  4. Mike Says:
    April 26th, 2009 at 4:31 am

    Thanks for originating that image Noah. I used it a start point to see what ideal sizes are for Facebook/iPhone – and have discovered that there is a case for using 603 instead as the maximum size.

    http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=245774&id=593745025&l=b6b11cf6d2

  5. tom Says:
    July 6th, 2009 at 10:35 pm

    thanks man. Helped with an event page i created.

  6. Mike Says:
    January 27th, 2010 at 3:23 pm

    Hi Noah.

    Facebook are rolling out a new maximum size of 720pix from 20th January 2010. See this developer’s post:

    http://developers.facebook.com/live_status.php#msg_541

  7. Steve Says:
    February 4th, 2010 at 10:13 am

    I’ve uploaded dozens of images all smaller than 603×603 px @ 72 dpi (I’ve even tried as small as 180×540 px) yet my thumbnail is always cropped. What am I overlooking? Thanks.

  8. Dang H. Says:
    February 24th, 2010 at 11:45 am

    Hi,

    I stumble on this article some time ago and I’ve been believing in your experiment since. But today I saw a picture so big I thought it was my contact lens (yes, my contacts make things look noticeably bigger than normal glasses).

    I think FB finally allow images with maximal width or height of 720 px. You should try it for yourself and update the article, since it’s popular on Google :-)

  9. Dang H. Says:
    February 24th, 2010 at 11:50 am

    PS. The pic I saw was uploaded on the 1st of Feb.

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