How to Get the Best Quality on Instagram

Ever spent hours shooting and editing the perfect photo or video, only to upload it to Instagram and watch it turn into a blurry, pixelated mess? You're not alone. The frustration is real, but thankfully, fixable. This guide breaks down every step you need to take before, during, and after you post to ensure your content looks as sharp and professional on Instagram as it does on your own screen.

Start with a High-Quality Source: Nail Your Camera Settings

Top-tier quality on Instagram begins long before you even open the app. The better your source file, the more data Instagram's compression algorithm has to work with, resulting in a cleaner final image. Whether you're using a phone or a professional camera, starting right is half the battle.

Shooting on Your Smartphone

Modern smartphone cameras are incredibly powerful, but you need to make sure you're using them to their full potential.

• Use Your Phone's Native Camera App: Forget the in-app Instagram camera. It's convenient but applies heavy compression from the get-go. Always use your phone's default camera app (the one on your home screen), which is designed to capture the highest quality video and photo your device is capable of.
• Go for Max Resolution: Dive into your camera settings and crank everything up. For video, shoot in 4K at 30 or 60 frames per second (fps). While Instagram will downscale it, a 4K source file contains far more detail than a 1080p one, leading to a much crisper 1080p final product after compression. For photos, make sure you're saving in a high-efficiency format like HEIC (on iPhone) if available.
• Clean Your Lens: It sounds unbelievably simple, but pocket lint and fingerprints are the arch-nemeses of a sharp photo. Give your lens a quick wipe with a soft cloth before every shoot. It makes a bigger difference than you think.

Shooting with a DSLR or Mirrorless Camera

If you're using dedicated camera gear, you have even more control over the quality of your source files.

• Shoot in RAW for Photos: When you shoot in JPEG, your camera makes a series of "permanent" decisions about color, sharpness, and compression. RAW files, on the other hand, capture all the uncompressed data from the sensor. This gives you enormous flexibility in post-production to adjust exposure, recover details from shadows and highlights, and fine-tune colors without degrading the image quality.
• Dial in Your Video Settings: For video, choose a high bitrate setting. Bitrate refers to the amount of data used to record one second of video. A higher bitrate captures more information, resulting in better quality and less visual noise. Also, consider shooting in a "flat" or LOG picture profile if you're comfortable with color grading. This preserves more dynamic range, giving you more editing control later on.

The Golden Rule: Match Instagram's Dimensions

This is arguably the most important step in the entire process. When you upload content that doesn't fit Instagram's preferred dimensions, the app is forced to crop and heavily compress it to make it fit. This is a primary cause of quality loss. To avoid this, you need to resize your content to the exact specifications before you upload.

Here are the 2024 dimensions you need to know, measured in pixels (width x height):

For the Feed (Photos, Carousels, and Videos)

• Portrait (4:5): 1080 x 1350 px. This is the king. It takes up the most vertical space on a user's screen, making it more engaging and eye-catching. Always aim for this size if your content allows it.
• Square (1:1): 1080 x 1080 px. The classic Instagram format. It's a safe and effective choice, especially for carousels where you want visual continuity.
• Landscape (1.91:1): 1080 x 566 px. Use this sparingly. Because it's so wide, it takes up the least amount of screen real estate and is easy for users to scroll past. Only use it when the wider composition is absolutely essential to the shot.

For Reels, Stories, & IGTV

• Vertical (9:16): 1080 x 1920 px. This is the non-negotiable standard for all full-screen vertical content. Creating your Reels and Stories in this exact dimension ensures they fill the screen perfectly without any weird cropping or black bars.

By cropping and resizing to these dimensions during your editing process, you take control away from Instagram's algorithm and drastically reduce unnecessary compression.

Perfect Your Export Settings

Once your content is edited and properly sized, how you export it from your editing software is the final lock you can turn to preserve quality. Sloppy export settings can undo all your hard work.

Export Settings for Photos

Whether you're using Lightroom, Photoshop, or another editor, these settings are your best friends:

• File Format: A high-quality JPG is perfect for Instagram.
• Dimensions: Set the width to 1080 pixels (for portrait or square) or the height to 1080px (if landscape orientation can't be helped). Let the other dimension adjust automatically to maintain your aspect ratio (e.g., 1080 W → 1350 H for a 4:5 image). This presets the file perfectly.
• Color Space: Always export in sRGB. Instagram converts everything to this color space, so if you upload a file in a wider gamut like Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB, colors can appear dull and desaturated.
• Quality/Compression: You don't need to export at 100% quality. This creates a needlessly large file that Instagram will compress heavily anyway. A setting between 76% and 85% usually hits the sweet spot between file size and visual fidelity.

Export Settings for Videos

Video is even more sensitive to bad export settings. For editing software like Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, or Final Cut Pro:

• Codec: H.264 is the universal standard. It offers an excellent balance of quality and file size that online platforms are built to handle.
• Resolution & Frame Rate: Match your export to your intended placement. For Reels, this means 1080 x 1920 pixels and usually 30 fps. Sticking to 30 fps is a safe bet, as that's what Instagram's platform primarily operates on.
• Bitrate: This is a big one. Bitrate determines the data density of your video. Too low, and it looks like a blocky mess. Too high, and Instagram will crush it with compression. For a 1080p, 30 fps video, a target bitrate between 10 and 15 Mbps (megabits per second) using a VBR (Variable Bitrate) 2-pass setting is an excellent target. This focuses data on complex scenes and saves it on simpler ones.
• Audio: Export audio with an AAC codec, a sample rate of 48 kHz, and in Stereo at the highest bitrate available, usually 320 kbps. Good audio matters!

The Final Steps: Your Upload Workflow

You've shot, edited, and exported your content perfectly. Now, you just need to get it onto Instagram cleanly.

Transferring Files to Your Phone

How you move your masterpiece from a computer to your phone matters. Emailing it to yourself or sending it through messaging apps will compress it into oblivion. Use a lossless method:

• Apple Ecosystem: AirDrop is your best friend. It's a direct wireless transfer that doesn't apply any compression.
• Android/Mixed Devices: A reliable cloud service like Google Drive or Dropbox is the way to go. Upload the full-quality file to the cloud from your computer, then download it from the app on your phone.

Change This One Critical Instagram Setting

Instagram has a hidden-in-plain-sight setting that makes a huge difference. You need to enable it on your account to allow the platform to use more data for your content.

How to enable high-quality uploads:

1. Go to your Instagram profile and tap the three lines in the top right corner.
2. Scroll down and tap Settings and privacy.
3. Find and tap Media quality.
4. Toggle on the setting for Upload at highest quality.

Make sure this is always on. It tells Instagram's servers to prioritize the quality of your content, even if it takes a bit longer to upload.

Upload on a Strong Wi-Fi Connection

Finally, avoid uploading posts on a weak cellular signal. An unstable connection can cause the upload to fail, pause, and restart, which sometimes results in extra compression being applied by the app. A solid, fast Wi-Fi connection gives your post the best chance to upload cleanly the first time.

Your High-Quality Checklist

Feeling overwhelmed? Here's a quick-glance checklist to run through before every post:

• Shoot high-res: Use your phone's native camera app at max settings or a DSLR in RAW.
• Crop precisely: Make your content a 4:5, 1:1, or 9:16 aspect ratio before uploading.
• Export correctly: For photos, use sRGB JPGs at 1080px wide. For videos, use H.264 at a 10-15 Mbps bitrate.
• Transfer losslessly: Use AirDrop or Google Drive, never Messenger or email.
• Enable the setting: Turn on "Upload at highest quality" in your Instagram settings.
• Connect to Wi-Fi: Always upload using a stable, fast internet connection.

Final Thoughts

Achieving crisp, high-quality content on Instagram isn't about some secret hack, but rather a methodical process of controlling every step. By starting with a great source file, respecting Instagram's dimensions, dialing in your export settings, and enabling one simple feature, you can make compression work for you, not against you.

Once you've perfected your export formula, the last thing you want is for a scheduler to miss a post or introduce another layer of compression. At Postbase, we built our platform for today's visual-first, video-heavy world. We prioritize reliable, high-quality uploads, especially for Reels and videos, ensuring your beautifully crafted content publishes looking exactly as intended. It means you can plan your posts with confidence, knowing the final result will be as sharp as the file you started with.