How to Crop an Image for a LinkedIn Banner or Profile
The size most often recommended for a LinkedIn personal profile banner (the background photo) is 1584 × 396 pixels, a wide strip with a 4:1 shape. For the profile photo, use a square image of at least 400 × 400 pixels, kept under 8 MB. LinkedIn displays the profile photo as a circle, so keep your face centred with some space around it.
To get there, crop the banner with a free-form box to a 4:1 shape, and crop the profile photo to a 1:1 square. Here's how to do both, and how to avoid the usual problems: cut-off text on the banner and a profile photo where the top of your head disappears.
LinkedIn image sizes at a glance
| Image | Size to aim for | Shape |
|---|
| Background photo (banner) | 1584 × 396 px | 4:1, wide strip |
| Profile photo | At least 400 × 400 px, under 8 MB | 1:1 square, shown as a circle |
These figures are for personal profiles and match LinkedIn's guidance as reported by design guides such as Canva's. LinkedIn changes its layout from time to time, so if the upload screen shows different numbers, go with what it says. Company Pages have their own, separate image specifications.
Cropping the banner
A 4:1 banner is much wider than a normal photo. A typical phone photo is 4:3 or 16:9, so you'll lose a lot of the top and bottom. Choose a picture with room to spare: a landscape, a city skyline, your workspace, or a simple branded graphic.
The Image Crop tool has preset ratios (1:1, 4:3, 16:9, 3:2 and 2:3) but no 4:1 preset, so use Free:
- Open Image Crop and click the upload area to choose your photo.
- Select Free in the Ratio bar.
- Drag the edges of the crop box to make a long, thin strip about four times wider than it is tall. Drag the box to move it over the part of the photo you want.
- Scroll with your mouse wheel or pinch to zoom if you need to frame it more tightly.
- Choose JPEG in the Format menu for a photo, or PNG if the banner has text or a logo with sharp edges.
- Click Download Cropped Image. The file is saved with
-cropped added to its name.
Free mode doesn't snap to an exact ratio, and the tool has no box for typing pixel sizes. That's fine: LinkedIn scales the image to fit, and a crop that's close to 4:1 works. If you want to check the exact dimensions, open the cropped file in Image Compress; the boxes under the controls show the final dimensions. Divide the width by the height. A result near 4 is right.
Two more checks:
- Width. Cropping only removes pixels. If your crop is much narrower than 1584 pixels, LinkedIn will stretch it and it can look soft. Start from a large original and keep the crop wide.
- File size. If the file is several megabytes, run it through Image Compress as a JPEG at around 80% quality.
Keep important things away from the edges
Your profile photo overlaps part of the banner, on the left on desktop, and the banner can be trimmed differently on phones and in different views. Put text, logos and anything you want people to read in the middle and right part of the strip, and leave the edges for background. After uploading, check your profile on both a computer and a phone.
Cropping the profile photo
For the profile photo, start with a well-lit photo where you face the camera. Head and shoulders works best; a full-body photo makes your face tiny in the small circle.
- Open Image Crop and choose your photo.
- Select 1:1 in the Ratio bar. The crop box stays square while you resize it.
- Position the box so your face is roughly in the middle, with a little space above your head and your shoulders near the bottom edge.
- Pick JPEG as the format and click Download Cropped Image.
Make sure the crop box covers at least 400 pixels of the original photo. With a normal phone photo that's rarely a problem, unless you crop a small face out of a group shot.
Preview it as a circle
Because LinkedIn shows your photo as a circle, the corners of your square are hidden. To see what will actually show, run the square through Circle Image Crop, which turns it into a round picture with a see-through background. If your chin or the top of your head is clipped in the circle, go back and loosen the square crop.
Upload the square version to LinkedIn, not the circle. LinkedIn applies its own circular frame, and the square gives it a little room to adjust.
Quick fixes for common problems
- Banner looks blurry: the crop was too small. Use a larger original or a wider part of the photo.
- Text on the banner is cut off on a phone: move it toward the centre and away from the left side.
- Profile photo upload fails: check that it's a JPG or PNG under 8 MB. If it's larger, compress it with Image Compress.
- Busy background behind you: Background Remover can cut you out of the photo. Place the result on a plain colour in a design app before uploading, as a see-through background may not look as you expect on LinkedIn.
All of these tools run in your browser, so your photos aren't uploaded to our server while you edit them.
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