What size should a web image be?

About 1200 to 1600 pixels on the long edge covers most uses, including full-width images on a high-density screen. A 4000 pixel phone photo is several times larger than anything a page will display.

Can I make an image larger?

You can, but nothing is gained. Enlarging invents pixels by interpolating between the ones that exist, so the result is the same picture, softer. There is no detail to recover.

Does resizing keep the aspect ratio?

Yes by default — typing a width fills in the matching height. Unlock it if you deliberately want to stretch the image.

Is resizing better than compressing?

For an oversized photo, yes. Halving the dimensions removes three quarters of the pixels with no visible cost at the size it is actually displayed, which beats any quality setting.

Resize Image

Change an image's dimensions by pixels or by percentage, with the aspect ratio locked unless you say otherwise. Nothing is uploaded.

Drop an image here

or click to browse

JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP • Max 30MB

Resizing is the biggest saving there is

File size scales with the number of pixels, and the number of pixels scales with the square of the dimensions. Halve the width and height and you have removed three quarters of the data — a far larger saving than any compression setting, and with no visible cost if the image was bigger than it needed to be.

A current phone takes photographs around 4000 pixels wide. Displayed in a document, an email or a web page, that image is shown at maybe 1200. The other 2800 pixels are carried around and thrown away by the viewer.

Sizes worth knowing

1200–1600 px on the long edge — general web use, including high-density screens.
1080 × 1080 — square social posts. 1080 × 1350 for portrait.
1200 × 630 — link preview images for social sharing.
Under 500 px — thumbnails, avatars, list icons.

Enlarging does not work

Making an image bigger cannot add detail that was never captured. The browser interpolates between existing pixels, so you get the same picture at a larger size and slightly softer. When the page warns that you are enlarging past the original, that is what it means. Find a larger original instead.

Order of operations

Resize first, then compress. Compressing a 4000-pixel photo down to a small file makes it look bad because the encoder is working far too hard; resizing to the size you actually need first means the compressor has an easy job and the result looks clean.

Frequently asked questions

Can I crop rather than scale?

Not here — this scales the whole image. Unlocking the aspect ratio stretches rather than crops, which is rarely what you want.

Does it keep transparency?

Save as PNG or WebP and yes. JPEG has no alpha channel, so transparent areas become white.

Will the metadata survive?

No. Resizing redraws the image, so EXIF including GPS is dropped along the way.

Related tools

Compress image — the step after resizing
Convert image — JPEG, PNG and WebP
Remove EXIF — strip metadata deliberately
EXIF viewer — check what a photo carries