The Maximum Size of a Photo in Facebook

Posted by Noah | Filed under technology

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

Tags: , ,

Permalink | July 27th, 2008

4 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

Leave a Reply