X (Twitter) Post Image Size: Why Your Photo Gets Cropped

You attach a photo to a post, hit publish, and the timeline shows something else — the top of someone’s head missing, a caption sliced off at the bottom. The image was not damaged. It was cropped to fit a preview, and the preview shape depends on how many images you attached.

One Image: 16:9

A single attached image is previewed at roughly 16:9 in the timeline. The full picture is still there — tapping it opens the original — but the preview is what decides whether anyone taps.

So the practical target is 1600 × 900 px. At that size the preview is the picture, with nothing cropped away. If your source is taller, decide yourself which 16:9 slice to keep instead of letting the platform guess.

Two, Three, Four Images

Multi-image posts tile into a grid, and the grid is unforgiving:

• Two images — side by side, each in a tall portrait slot. A landscape photo loses both ends.
• Three images — one large on the left, two stacked on the right. The two small ones are cropped hardest.
• Four images — a 2×2 grid of near-squares. Everything gets squared off.

The rule that follows: when you post more than one image, crop them square before uploading. A square survives every grid position with the subject intact. Mixing orientations in one post is what produces those posts where the second photo is a close-up of someone’s elbow.

File Size and Format

Images are limited to about 5 MB on the web, with animated GIFs allowed up to around 15 MB. JPG, PNG and GIF are all accepted.

Choose by content, not habit. Photographs belong in JPG — a 1600 × 900 photo at quality 85 lands comfortably under 1 MB. Screenshots, charts and anything containing text belong in PNG, because JPG compression smears the edges of letterforms and that is exactly the detail people are trying to read.

Why Screenshots Look Worse Than Photos

A screenshot posted as JPG is the most common quality complaint, and the cause is structural rather than accidental. JPG compression works by discarding high-frequency detail — precisely what sharp text is made of. Photographs tolerate it because they contain few hard edges; a screenshot of a spreadsheet is nothing but hard edges.

Save screenshots as PNG. The file is larger, but it stays under the limit at normal screen dimensions, and the text stays readable.

Getting the Crop You Want

Two steps, and the order matters. Crop first, to decide the composition; then resize, to hit the target dimensions. Doing it the other way round means you resize material you are about to throw away.

• Single image → crop to 16:9, resize to 1600 × 900
• Multiple images → crop each to 1:1, resize to 1080 × 1080
• Then compress only if the file is over the limit

Quick Reference

• One image: 1600 × 900 px (16:9)
• Two to four images: 1080 × 1080 px square each
• Header: 1500 × 500 px (3:1)
• Profile photo: 400 × 400 px, shown as a circle
• Under 5 MB; JPG for photos, PNG for text and screenshots

None of this requires design skill. It requires deciding the crop yourself rather than discovering it after publishing.