How to Resize Nail Photos for Social Media

Quick answer: Shoot wide, then crop to 1080 by 1350 pixels for an Instagram feed post, 1080 by 1920 for Stories, Reels and TikTok, and 1000 by 1500 for Pinterest. Crop rather than stretch, keep the nails away from the edges, and export once per platform instead of reusing one file everywhere.

You edited the photo, the colour is right, the background is clean, and then Instagram lops the free edges off the top two nails.

Or worse, it leaves them in and adds white bars either side, so the post looks like it was pasted in from somewhere else.

What size should nail photos be for Instagram?

1080 by 1350 pixels, in a 4:5 portrait shape, for a normal feed post.

Instagram accepts three feed ratios: 4:5 portrait at 1080 by 1350, 1:1 square at 1080 by 1080, and 1.91:1 landscape at 1080 by 566. Portrait is the current default recommendation because it takes the most vertical space on a phone screen, according to Buffer's Instagram size guide.

Stories and Reels are a different shape entirely: 1080 by 1920 pixels, 9:16, which is the full phone screen.

For a nail tech, the practical consequence is that a single edited photo cannot serve both. A 4:5 crop of a hand becomes a 9:16 crop only by cutting the sides off or adding space above and below, and both decisions change what the viewer sees first.

Crop for the feed, then recrop for Stories. It takes ten seconds and it is the difference between a Story where the nails fill the screen and one where they sit in a small band in the middle with the app's interface over them.

What about TikTok and Pinterest?

TikTok is 1080 by 1920, the same 9:16 as Reels, so one vertical export covers both.

Pinterest wants 1000 by 1500, a 2:3 portrait shape, and Pinterest pin size guidance notes that pins under 600 pixels wide get noticeably less distribution. That is taller than a feed post but not as tall as a Story, and it matters more on Pinterest than elsewhere because pins are displayed in a scrolling column where taller images occupy more of a scroller's attention. The other consequence of 2:3 is that more of the frame ends up being hand and background rather than nails, so a cluttered desk that was cropped out of your Instagram version reappears. There is more on that in Pinterest for nail techs.

Here is the full set worth keeping somewhere you can find it.

The Google Business Profile row comes from Google's own guidance, which recommends 720 pixels square with a minimum of 250, in JPG or PNG, between 10 KB and 5 MB, per the Business Profile help page.

How do you crop a nail photo without cutting the nails?

Leave yourself room at the shooting stage.

The single most useful habit is to frame wider than you think you need. A nail photo shot tight to the fingertips has no crop options at all: any reframe cuts into the set. The same photo shot with a hand's width of space around the fingers can become a 4:5, a 9:16 and a 1:1 without losing a single free edge.

Then when you crop:

• Put the nails in the upper two thirds of a vertical crop, because captions, usernames and the Reels interface all sit at the bottom.
• Keep at least a finger's width between the free edges and the frame edge, so nothing looks amputated.
• Crop along the direction of the hand rather than against it. A hand angled diagonally fits a portrait shape badly and a square one well.
• Check the thumbnail, not the full-size version, since the grid is where people actually decide.

The related decision of which crop flatters which nail length is covered in cropping nail photos for Instagram.

Should you ever upscale a nail photo?

No. Resize down, never up.

Every modern phone shoots at a resolution well above 1080 pixels wide, so cropping to 1080 by 1350 is a reduction and the result stays sharp. Enlarging a small file to reach a target size invents pixels that were never recorded, and on a nail photo that shows up immediately as soft, plasticky edges around the free edge and mushy detail in any nail art.

The one case where techs accidentally upscale is when they crop very tightly into a photo, on a phone, and then export. Crop into the middle third of an image and you may already be below 1080 pixels wide before the app adds anything back. If a cropped photo looks soft, check how much of the original frame is left rather than reaching for sharpening.

Sharpening does not fix an upscale either. It exaggerates the artificial edges the enlargement created. The full picture on that is in sharpening nail photos.

A four-step resizing routine

1. Shoot wide, with a hand's width of space around the fingers, so every crop stays available.
2. Edit the full-size photo first, colour and background, before any cropping happens.
3. Export a 4:5 version at 1080 by 1350 for the feed, keeping the nails in the upper two thirds.
4. Recrop the same edited file to 9:16 for Stories, Reels and TikTok rather than letting the app fit it for you.

Where NailTech fits in

Posting one set across a feed, a Story and a pin means three different shapes of the same photograph, and every one of them has to carry the same colour or the set stops looking like one appointment. That is where a resizing routine quietly turns into a consistency problem: three exports, three chances for the crop to change what the automatic processing decides the photo needs.

NailTech is a nail image editor, so the correction is made once on the full file and the crops come out of a photo that is already right.

• Fixes colour before cropping, so every export matches.
• Clears the background that a taller Pinterest crop puts back in the frame.
• Keeps a set consistent across all ten nails and all three placements.
• Works on the original file, not a version already reduced to 1080 pixels.

NailTech is a phone editor for nail photos, not a scheduler. It gets the photo right; posting it at the correct size on each platform is still your job.

A photo cropped into its middle third is already below 1080 pixels wide before the app touches it, which is why a tightly cropped nail shot looks soft no matter how much you sharpen it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What size should nail photos be for Instagram?

Nail photos should be 1080 by 1350 pixels in a 4:5 portrait ratio for an Instagram feed post, which is the recommended default because it uses the most vertical space on a phone screen. Square posts are 1080 by 1080 and Stories and Reels are 1080 by 1920, so a feed photo needs recropping before it works as a Story.

Can I use the same photo for Instagram and TikTok?

The same edited photo works for both, but it needs two different crops. Instagram feed posts are 4:5 at 1080 by 1350, while TikTok is 9:16 at 1080 by 1920. Exporting one file for both means either cutting the sides off the nails or leaving empty bars above and below the hand.

Does resizing a nail photo lower the quality?

Resizing down does not lower quality, because a phone shoots well above 1080 pixels wide and cropping to that size is a reduction. Enlarging a small photo to reach a target size does lower quality, since it invents pixels that were never recorded and shows up as soft edges around the free edge and nail art.

What size should nail photos be for Google Business Profile?

Google recommends Business Profile photos at 720 pixels tall by 720 pixels wide, with a minimum of 250 by 250, saved as JPG or PNG between 10 KB and 5 MB. Google also asks that photos be in focus, well lit, and free of heavy filtering so they represent the business accurately.

Where should the nails sit in a vertical crop?

Nails should sit in the upper two thirds of a vertical crop, because captions, usernames, and the Reels and Stories interface elements all overlay the bottom of the screen. Leaving at least a finger's width between the free edges and the frame edge stops the set looking cut off at thumbnail size.

Final Takeaways

• 1080 by 1350 for the Instagram feed, 1080 by 1920 for Stories, Reels and TikTok.
• 1000 by 1500 for Pinterest, and 720 by 720 or larger for Google Business Profile.
• Shoot wide so all three crops remain possible from one file.
• Edit before cropping, never the other way round.
• Never upscale, and check how much of the original frame a tight crop left you.
• Nails in the upper two thirds of anything vertical.

Sources: Buffer Instagram size guide, Google Business Profile photo help, Pinterest pin size guide.