TikTok Image Size Guide

TikTok image size specifications for 2026

TikTok is built around the vertical 9:16 canvas — the native orientation of a phone held upright. Understanding which pixel dimensions map to which format prevents covers from being cropped unexpectedly, keeps photo slideshows from being letterboxed, and ensures your profile picture stays sharp at every size the app renders it.

Video covers: the 9:16 canvas and the 1:1 grid crop

When a viewer lands on a TikTok video, they see a full-screen 9:16 preview — the entire 1080 × 1920 px frame. When they visit your profile, TikTok shows a grid of your videos where each cover is cropped to a 1:1 square, taken from the centre of the vertical frame. This means a single image needs to work at two very different compositions.

The practical rule is straightforward: place your main subject — a face, a product, the key visual — in the central square of the frame. Approximately the middle 1080 × 1080 px will always be visible in both the full-screen view and the profile grid. Anything in the top or bottom 420 px is safe for the video context but will be cut in the grid.

TikTok recompresses cover images during video processing. Uploading a clean JPEG at 85 % quality gives the algorithm good source material to work with. Uploading a heavily compressed image at 50 % quality risks visible blocking artefacts after TikTok's own compression pass.

Photo slideshows: choosing the right orientation

TikTok's photo slideshow feature — sometimes called a photo post or photo carousel — supports three orientations. Portrait (9:16) fills the entire screen and is the most visually immersive option. Landscape (16:9) sits in the centre of the vertical canvas with padding above and below. Square (1:1) falls between the two, showing side padding on a vertical canvas.

Portrait is the strongest choice for new content created specifically for TikTok, because it matches the app's native canvas with no padding. Square is useful when you are repurposing Instagram feed posts — 1080 × 1080 px content translates directly without cropping. Landscape works for screen recordings, presentations, or gaming clips where the natural aspect ratio is horizontal.

Within a single slideshow, all images must share the same orientation. If you mix portrait and landscape images, TikTok applies the orientation of the first image to the entire post, cropping or padding subsequent slides to match. Sorting your images by orientation before creating the post avoids this.

The minimum short-side resolution for any photo slideshow image is around 720 px. Below that threshold, TikTok's compression introduces visible blocking that is especially noticeable on the smooth gradients and skin tones typical of portrait photography. Uploading at 1080 px on the short side keeps the image in the safe zone for all current device pixel densities.

Profile picture: the circular mask and why it matters

TikTok renders profile pictures as circles. The platform applies a circular mask to your uploaded square image and displays it at several different sizes depending on context: the home feed, video overlays, comment sections, and the full profile page all render the circle at different diameters.

The minimum accepted upload size is 200 × 200 px, but that produces a noticeably soft result at the larger render sizes TikTok uses on profile pages. Uploading at 1000 × 1000 px gives the platform enough resolution to render sharply at every context without upscaling.

The circular mask clips the outer edges of the square. Keep the main subject — a face, a logo, an icon — centred and clear of the edges. Roughly the outer 8 % on each side falls behind the mask. A logo placed flush with the corner of the frame will be partially cut off. A face with eyes near the top of the frame risks clipping the top of the head.

Both JPEG and PNG formats are accepted for profile pictures. For photographic subjects, JPEG at 85 % quality or higher is fine. For logos or graphics with flat colours and hard edges, PNG preserves the crisp lines better than JPEG's block compression artefacts.

How TikTok handles file size and compression

TikTok recompresses images uploaded as photo slideshow frames and video covers during ingest. The effective per-image limit for photo posts is approximately 20 MB, though in practice a correctly sized 1080 × 1920 px JPEG at 85 % quality is 300–800 KB — well under that ceiling.

The key insight is that TikTok applies its own compression regardless of what you upload. A file that is already well-compressed at 85 % quality gives the algorithm better source material than an over-compressed 40 % quality version, because the starting artefacts do not compound. But uploading at 95 % quality versus 85 % quality makes no visible difference in the final output — TikTok's compression pass normalises both to a similar quality level.

File size on disk is therefore not a quality proxy for TikTok content. Pixel dimensions and aspect ratio are the variables that determine how your image appears on screen. A 400 KB JPEG at 1080 × 1920 px will look as sharp as a 4 MB JPEG at the same dimensions after TikTok has processed both.

DPI and why it is irrelevant for TikTok

DPI (dots per inch) is a print metadata value stored in the EXIF header of an image file. It tells a printer how densely to lay ink on paper. TikTok, like every screen-based platform, renders images purely by pixel count — width × height in pixels — and ignores the DPI tag entirely.

A 1080 × 1920 px image at 72 DPI and the same image at 300 DPI are visually identical on any screen because both files contain exactly the same number of pixels. Changing the DPI value in an image editor does not alter the pixel data and has no effect on how the image looks on TikTok. If you want to check what DPI your file reports, the DPI checker reads the EXIF value without any upload.

EXIF metadata and TikTok uploads

TikTok strips most EXIF metadata from images and videos on ingest, including GPS coordinates, camera model, and capture timestamps. This means a photo's location information is not typically exposed to viewers via the file served from TikTok's CDN.

However, platform-side stripping is not a reliable privacy control. It can change without notice, it applies only to content served through TikTok's own infrastructure, and it offers no protection in contexts outside the platform: files downloaded before upload, files shared via DM, screen recordings that preserve metadata in a new container, or any workflow where the original file passes through other hands before reaching TikTok.

The safest approach is to strip EXIF before uploading, using a local tool that processes the file on your device without sending it to a server. The EXIF remover on this site handles JPEG and PNG files entirely in the browser. For a full view of what metadata your file currently carries, the photo metadata viewer reads every tag — GPS coordinates, device model, timestamps — without uploading anything.

If you are checking the dimensions of an image before posting, the image dimensions checker reads pixel width, height, aspect ratio and file size from any JPEG or PNG in the same browser-only workflow. Drop the file, confirm the dimensions against the table above, and you are ready to post.

Profile grid safe zone: what your cover thumbnail actually shows

When a viewer lands on your profile, TikTok displays all your videos as a grid of square thumbnails. Each square is a 1:1 crop taken from the centre of your video cover — which is a 9:16 vertical image. This means roughly 56 % of the original frame height is discarded: the top and bottom edges are cut off entirely.

In practice, the safe zone for grid visibility runs from approximately 30 % to 70 % of the frame height. If your cover is 1080 × 1920 px, the portion that survives the grid crop spans from about y=576 px to y=1344 px — a band 768 px tall centred on the 1080-pixel-wide canvas. Anything outside this band — a title at the very top, a face near the bottom — will be invisible in the grid view.

A practical rule: place your subject, face, or text overlay within the middle third of the vertical frame. When you choose a cover in the TikTok app, drag the thumbnail selector until the grid preview looks right before confirming — the app shows you exactly what will appear in the grid. There is no separate "grid thumbnail" upload; the grid crop and the full cover are the same file. If you want different framing for the grid versus the full-screen view, the only option is to choose a cover frame that works acceptably in both contexts, since TikTok does not support separate assets for each.

For comparison, Instagram also crops cover frames to a square for the profile grid, and the same centred-subject principle applies. The Instagram image size guide covers the grid crop rules in detail if you are repurposing TikTok content across platforms.

Why uploads look blurry after posting, and how to fix it

A photo that looks sharp on your phone can appear noticeably soft after TikTok processes it. The causes follow a predictable order. Work through them in sequence before concluding the platform has degraded your file beyond recovery.

Wrong dimensions. The most common cause. If you upload an image that is smaller than the canvas TikTok needs — for example, a 720 × 1280 px photo into a portrait slideshow — TikTok scales it up to fill the 9:16 frame, and upscaling always introduces softness. Check the pixel dimensions of your source file before uploading. The image dimensions checker reads them from any JPEG or PNG without uploading the file to a server. Target 1080 × 1920 px for portrait, 1920 × 1080 px for landscape.

Wrong aspect ratio. If your image is the right pixel count but the wrong ratio — say, a 1080 × 1350 px Instagram portrait — TikTok pads it with a blurred background to fill the 9:16 canvas. The image itself is not blurry, but the composition changes in a way that looks like it. Crop to the target ratio before uploading.

Over-compressed source file. TikTok runs its own compression pass on every image. If your source file was already heavily compressed — JPEG quality below about 75 % — the re-compression compounds the artefacts. The starting quality of the file matters. Export at 80–90 % JPEG quality for the best outcome after TikTok's processing. There is no benefit to uploading at 100 % quality or as a PNG; TikTok's output quality is determined by its own encoder, not the bit depth of your source.

Slow connection during upload. In rare cases, a failed or partial upload causes TikTok to use a lower-quality fallback. If the video looks blurry immediately after posting but the source file is correct, delete and re-upload on a stable Wi-Fi connection. The processing pipeline can also take a few minutes after the initial post before the full-quality version is served — check again after five minutes.

Screen recording or screenshot of the original. If the file you are uploading is a screenshot or screen recording of another image rather than the original export, it has already been through at least one compression step. Always upload the original file from your camera roll or design tool, not a screenshot.

Photo Mode carousels: keeping a consistent ratio across all slides

TikTok's Photo Mode (formerly called "photo slideshow") lets you post up to 35 images as a swipeable carousel. Unlike a video, each slide is displayed as a static image, which means each one is independently composited onto the playback canvas. This creates a specific problem: if your slides are different aspect ratios, TikTok treats each one separately, and the canvas can shift between slides — one slide fills edge-to-edge, the next is letterboxed, the next has side padding. The result looks inconsistent and unintentional.

The straightforward fix is to export all slides at the same pixel dimensions before uploading. Portrait carousels work best at 1080 × 1920 px (9:16) for all slides. If you are repurposing square content from another platform — for example, 1080 × 1080 px posts from Instagram — consider one of two approaches: pad each image to 1080 × 1920 px with a solid or blurred background before uploading, or accept the side-padding and keep all slides at 1080 × 1080 px so the padding is at least uniform. Mixing portrait and square slides in the same carousel produces the inconsistent layout described above. See the Instagram image size guide for the corresponding square and portrait specs if you are cross-posting content.

For text-overlay carousels, the safe zone rules apply to every slide: keep text and logos within the central 60 % of the frame height to avoid the playback UI controls at the bottom and the account information bar at the top. The exact pixel positions of these overlays vary slightly by device and OS version; check on both iPhone and Android if consistency matters to your use case, as the bottom UI bar is taller on Android in some layouts.

Cover selection for Photo Mode carousels follows the same grid-crop rules as video covers: the profile grid shows a 1:1 square from the centre of the first slide. Choose your first slide deliberately, keeping the main subject centred, or use the cover selector in the app to pick a different slide as the grid thumbnail.

Checking original image dimensions with an EXIF viewer

Before uploading to TikTok, it is worth confirming that the file you have is the original at full resolution — not a screenshot, a compressed export, or a resized copy. An EXIF viewer reads the pixel dimensions directly from the file header without processing or altering the image. Here is the sequence to follow.

Step 1: drop the file into the checker on this page. The image dimensions checker at the top of the page reads pixel width, height, aspect ratio, and file size. All processing happens in your browser — the file is never sent to a server. The result tells you whether the file meets TikTok's dimension requirements before you upload.

Step 2: read the full EXIF block if you need more detail. The photo metadata viewer reads every EXIF tag: pixel dimensions, original capture date, camera model, GPS coordinates, color profile, and the "PixelXDimension" / "PixelYDimension" tags that some cameras write separately from the JPEG header. This is useful when you have multiple versions of the same file — original raw export, resized copy, screenshot — and need to confirm which one is at full resolution.

Step 3: compare pixel dimensions against the target. For a portrait TikTok cover or Photo Mode slide, you are looking for 1080 × 1920 px (width × height). If the viewer reports a smaller size — 750 × 1334 px, for example — the file is a screenshot from an older iPhone and will be upscaled by TikTok with visible softness. If the viewer reports a larger size — 3024 × 4032 px from a modern phone camera — the file is an unresized original. TikTok will downsample it, which is fine; downsampling preserves quality better than upsampling. You may still want to resize before uploading for faster upload times and predictable output.

Step 4: check the color profile. Images exported in a wide-gamut color profile (Display P3, ProPhoto RGB) can shift in color after TikTok converts them to sRGB for display. If the metadata viewer shows a non-sRGB color space, convert to sRGB in your image editor before uploading to prevent unexpected color shifts. This step is optional but relevant if color accuracy matters — product photography, artwork, or images with saturated colors. Check the app's current handling of color profiles against the in-app guidance, as platform behavior may change.

For YouTube thumbnails the same dimension-check workflow applies, and the YouTube thumbnail size guide covers the target dimensions and safe zone for that platform specifically.