Facebook photo album image size

Are the pictures in your Facebook album all look blurry, or out-of-focus ?

The reason is simple, your pictures are not optimized to be displayed in Facebook. Even though nowadays’ digital cameras can capture very high resolution pictures but you shall not upload your full-size pictures to Facebook album straightaway. That requires Facebook to resize the pictures to fit their page layout, and makes your pictures look blurry.

In fact, the optimal size for pictures in Facebook album is 604 pixels high (or wide). Therefore, before you upload the pictures to your newly created album in Facebook, try first resizing the picture to 604 pixels wide or high. Then, use the sharpening tool or unsharp mask within your image editing tool to sharpen the pictures. Lastly, upload those processed pictures to the album.

Update 1 : From January 20th 2010, Facebook has upgraded their photo album feature to support 720 pixels high (or wide). So if you have fast Internet connection, then why not resize the photos to 720 pixels and share those with your friends ?

Update 2 : From 2nd October 2010, Facebook upgraded their photo album to support upload of photos with 2,048 pixels. In addition, the site rolled out new uploader, friend-tagging feature and lightbox based viewer.

Update 3 : From end August, 2011 – now Facebook can display the photos up to 900 pixels (you can upload photos with bigger size, but it will downsize it to 900 pixels to display).

Update 4 : Just in case you are searching for this … the new Timeline Cover image / photo size is 850 x 315 pixels.

Update 5 : From March, 2012 – Facebook  upgraded the photo viewer application to support a full-screen view up to 2048 by 2048 pixels, the maximum upload size for users. However, the upgraded view will only work in recent versions of Firefox and Chrome. Users can open up the full-screen view by clicking “Fullscreen” in the options menu beneath the photo or clicking the arrow icon at the top right hand corner of the picture to expand the size.

Update 6 : So …. Google+ also changed the profile layout, and if you want to make a cover photo just for Google+, don’t forget to resize it to 940 by 180 pixels.

Update 7 : I just prepared some Facebook Timeline cover images for you all to download and use for free. Enjoy !!

Here you go, one sample album from my Kyoto trip with my beloved Olympus camera (link to E-P3, but the photos were taken with E-510). Enjoy !!


Author: Michael Yung

Michael possessed over 30 years of experience in Information Technology with focuses on complex application development, database technologies and IT strategy. He also spent the last 20 years in Internet technology, eCommerce development / operations, web usability, computer security and Public Key Infrastructure technologies.

46 thoughts on “Facebook photo album image size”

  5. surprise that I got to be here with Google “facebook upload photo size”… XD.

    Thanks mentor!

    Should I switch to Flickr, or Picasa?!

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    1. Hi Peng,

      For thumbnail photos, I prefer to use the default WP style. May be you can try it. Another possible reason is careful setting of the column width and # of photos in a row.

      Hope it helps.

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  10. Thanks, I tried to insert a gallery from my WP uploads (with bigger thumbnails) but the images don’t have the same effect as your site. It loads as a separate page.

    I want the NextGEN effect but WP default gallery like your above images.

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  13. Thank you SOOOOO much. I take pictures at my school with a Canon EOS Rebel T2i just for fun and they are great photos, but they are also 7-10MP sized pics and they would post somewhat blurry. Resizing them is a hassle since i take about 300-400 on average. Then I found the script in Photoshop to automatically resize them for me. (File -> Scripts -> Image Processor) From there you can just type the size you want to resize them to. I used your magic number and GREAT SUCCESS! *Borat Voice* Thank you thank you thank you. it used to take 4-8 hours to upload all those pictures but now it takes 30 mins max

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  15. Hey Mike, I already adjusted my pix to 720 (300dpi). But when I upload it on facebook, it lost the quality. Any advise how to get the original picture quality when uploading on facebook? Thanks. =:->

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  16. Hi Mike,

    Would you give me more details on sharpening my pix? I’m a novice on photoshop and tried sharpening 1 of my pix but got same result after uploading on facebook. Thanks again..

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  17. I’ve been re-sizing to 720 pixels and sharpening, but I’m convinced that the Facebook processing is lowering the JPEG quality-setting. They just don’t seem to want to give their users a good photographic experience.

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    1. Hi Trevor,

      Yes, very likely FB will do another round of processing to meet their size limit. Therefore, I suggest you to also adjust the JPEG compression ratio lower to make file size smaller first (as long as you can accept the quality).

      Hope it helps.

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  19. Here is my question, I can resize as you suggested and have photoshop no problem. But my images don’t fit their frame. So, lets say you click on album and select an album. The album opens to partial images. To see a whole image, you have to click on that image. I there a way of making it so that the image fully shows in the frame of the album page? The cutoff images…so so looking.

    Then when you click you see the picture and information about it

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  20. Hi Michael, you don’t know how excited I was to find your posting. This has been the “quest for the Holy Grail.” I’m building my first Facebook “Official Company” page. Based on your tip, here’s what I’ve determined so far. I’m opening our company’s promotional images in CS3/Fireworks 9.0; downsizing the 800 px {wide} JPEG to 600 px {wide} x 343 px {high}; select the image and click on “Sharpen” one time; optimize the image from its setting of 242.09K, 38 Sec @ 56kbps to “JPEG Better Quality” that brings the optimized image down to 79.18k, 12 seconds @ 56kbps. I uploaded to FB these 600 px {wide} images into their “Photos” Tab, Photo Album wizard. So far, I’m liking what I see. Don

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  22. Hi Michael…
    In reference to your last 2 updates on pixel max size on Facebook…Isn’t 900 pixels less than the previous 2048 pixels? Please forgive me if that’s not an intelligent question or comparison…Just trying to learn. Also, if 900 pixels is the max (width or length) then what would the max on the other end be or should I let my software keep the appropriate aspect ratio (whatever it chooses on the other end)?
    Thanks so much.

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    1. Hi Ken,

      What it really means is you can upload picture to Facebook with size up to 2,048 pixels, but when Facebook display your photos, it will display up to 900 pixels. So what I will do is to keep the appropriate aspect ratio, resize the photo to 900 pixels (such that FB will not downsize it). Hope it helps.

      Cheers, Michael

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  23. Hi Michael,

    I took your advice and resized my pics to 900 pixels to upload to FB. It automatically rescaled to 720. I also tested in different size: 800, 960, 1024, 2048 and they all reverted same to 720.

    Sometime I see photos of 960 pixels from others (right-click on image to check info).

    Don’t know why.
    Please help to clarify. Thanks!

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    1. Hi Chinny,

      Good day. One possible reason is this 900 / 960 pixels feature has not rolled out to your account. Suggest to wait for some more time first and rety.

      Hope it helps.

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  26. hi! i’ve the same question as Ayelle ^_^

    what’s the size of the album covers… as in album covers in your photo albums

    i’m doing personalized covers and it the preview gets cropped.

    thanks in advance!

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    1. Hi all,

      Looks like many asked for the size of “album cover”, but actually I don’t know what it really means (as Facebook keep changing the way it presents the photo album). Anyway, if you want to show a picture perfectly in the Timeline, then the size is 403 x 403 pixels (i.e. Facebook will crop your picture to fit in).

      Hope it helps !!

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  28. My FB cover photo on my ipad used to occupy the full screen now it only occupies the middle 1/3. It’s ok on my PC and smart phone. I think it occurred after a software upgrade. Anyone know why this is?

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