Home › Blog › How to Resize a Photo
Most photo resizing requests aren't about making an image "smaller" in a vague sense — they're about hitting an exact pixel dimension a form or platform demands. Get it wrong and a passport application gets rejected, or a LinkedIn photo displays cropped strangely. Here are the numbers to use, and how to hit them exactly.
| Use Case | Typical Size |
|---|---|
| US Passport Photo | 2×2 in (600×600px at 300 DPI) |
| LinkedIn Profile Photo | 400×400px minimum |
| Instagram Square Post | 1080×1080px |
| Facebook / Open Graph Cover | 1200×630px |
| Standard HD Wallpaper | 1920×1080px |
Requirements vary by country and platform, and change over time — always confirm against the current official requirements (for passports, your country's passport agency website) before submitting anything important.
Resizing scales the entire image to new dimensions — nothing is cut off, but if the aspect ratio changes and you don't lock it, the image can look stretched. If a platform requires an exact square or rectangular crop of a specific part of your photo (rather than the whole image scaled down), you'll want a cropping tool instead. For most size requirements — including passport photos and profile pictures — resizing the full image is what's actually needed.
Resizing to a smaller pixel dimension naturally reduces file size, but if you need it even smaller for an upload limit, run the resized image through the Compress Image tool afterward.