Why 4:5 rather than something taller?

Because 4:5 is where feeds stop. A post taller than that is cropped by the platform to fit its layout, from the centre, without asking — which is how a carefully composed vertical shot ends up in the feed with somebody’s feet missing. 4:5 is the tallest shape that is shown whole.

How much of my photo will I lose?

From a phone photo held upright, very little — a portrait 4:3 photo is 3:4, which is slightly wider than 4:5, so only a thin strip comes off each side. From a landscape photograph, most of it: you are keeping a tall slice of a wide picture, and where that slice sits is the whole decision.

Is a 4:5 post better than a square one?

It takes up roughly a quarter more vertical space in a scrolling feed at the same width, which is a real advantage. It is not better in every case: a wide subject in a tall frame leaves large dead areas, and a profile grid mixing squares and portraits looks inconsistent. Let the photograph decide.

Does cropping reduce the file size?

Yes, and often more than expected, because you have removed pixels rather than just compressed them. Cropping before compressing is the single most effective thing you can do when a tight size limit is involved — every pixel you cut is budget returned to the part of the picture that matters.

Crop an image to 4:5

The portrait ratio is already selected. A gentle crop from a phone photo, a hard one from a landscape.

Choose an imageor drag it here, or paste it

JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, AVIF and BMP. Your file is processed on your device.

How do I crop an image to 4:5?

Add your photo below — the 4:5 ratio is already applied — drag the frame to choose the composition, and download. 4:5 is the tallest shape most social feeds display in full, so cropping to it yourself is how you avoid the platform cropping it for you, from the centre, without asking.

The shape feeds actually show

Social feeds cap the height of a post, because an unlimited one would fill the screen and push everything else away. 4:5 is where that cap sits on the platforms most people mean.

The practical consequence is that anything taller gets cropped — by the platform, from the centre, silently. Cropping to 4:5 yourself is not about satisfying a rule so much as taking the decision away from an algorithm that does not know what the subject of your photograph is.

A gentle crop, usually

This is the least destructive of the tall ratios. A phone photo taken upright is 3:4, which is very close to 4:5 — you lose a narrow band from each side and most people would not notice.

Coming from a landscape photograph is a different exercise entirely. You are keeping a tall portion of a wide image and discarding the rest, so drag the frame onto the subject rather than accepting the middle. In a group photo, the middle is almost never where you want it.

Why not just let the platform do it?

Because it crops from the centre, every time, regardless of content. A centred crop works for a portrait taken deliberately and fails for almost everything else — the person standing to the left, the product placed in the lower third, the sign whose text runs to the edge of the frame.

Doing it here also means you see the result before you commit, rather than after it is published.

When to pad instead

If the width is the point of the picture — a landscape, a panorama, a wide group — cropping to 4:5 throws away the composition. The border tool will fit the whole image inside a 4:5 frame with a background colour above and below, so nothing is removed and the post still displays in full.

It costs you frame area and keeps the photograph. Which of those matters more depends entirely on the image, which is why both tools exist.

Then the pixel size, if it matters

Cropping sets the shape and not the resolution. Where a platform also specifies dimensions, 1080 × 1350 is 4:5 at the size feeds store, and the resizer will produce exactly that. If a file size limit is the binding constraint instead, set it under Advanced options here — cropping first means the whole byte budget is spent on the part of the picture you kept.

Common questions

Why 4:5 rather than something taller?: Because 4:5 is where feeds stop. A post taller than that is cropped by the platform to fit its layout, from the centre, without asking — which is how a carefully composed vertical shot ends up in the feed with somebody’s feet missing. 4:5 is the tallest shape that is shown whole.
How much of my photo will I lose?: From a phone photo held upright, very little — a portrait 4:3 photo is 3:4, which is slightly wider than 4:5, so only a thin strip comes off each side. From a landscape photograph, most of it: you are keeping a tall slice of a wide picture, and where that slice sits is the whole decision.
Is a 4:5 post better than a square one?: It takes up roughly a quarter more vertical space in a scrolling feed at the same width, which is a real advantage. It is not better in every case: a wide subject in a tall frame leaves large dead areas, and a profile grid mixing squares and portraits looks inconsistent. Let the photograph decide.
Does cropping reduce the file size?: Yes, and often more than expected, because you have removed pixels rather than just compressed them. Cropping before compressing is the single most effective thing you can do when a tight size limit is involved — every pixel you cut is budget returned to the part of the picture that matters.