Resize Image for Instagram

Instagram's feed has used a square canvas as its default aspect ratio since the app launched, and 1080×1080 is the resolution it displays that canvas at on current high-density phone screens. Uploading anything smaller gets scaled up by Instagram's own pipeline, which is a worse result than scaling it yourself with a proper resampling filter; uploading anything larger gets scaled down and recompressed, discarding detail you had no control over.

Doing the resize here rather than letting the platform handle it means the downscaling filter and the JPEG quality setting are both under your control, rather than whatever Instagram's encoder decides — the difference is usually only visible on close inspection, but it is there.

Most source photos are not square, so getting to 1080×1080 without distortion means cropping to a square region first, then resizing. Because this preset locks aspect ratio, feeding it a rectangular photo without cropping first will letterbox rather than fill the frame — the subject needs to already sit within a square crop, or the composition should tolerate bars on two sides. Instagram's own upload flow does offer in-app cropping, so this preset is most useful for preparing a photo that has already been composed or cropped for the square format elsewhere.