How to Make an Instagram Post Rectangular

Tired of Instagram awkwardly cropping your masterpiece photo into a square? You’ve come to the right place. Ditching the default crop and posting your rectangular images - whether they’re tall portraits or sweeping landscapes - is one of the easiest ways to make your content pop. This guide will show you exactly how to do it, from the simple in-app trick to the best free tools for handling non-standard sizes.

Why Should You Bother with Rectangular Posts?

While the classic square has its charm, breaking out of that box offers some serious advantages for your brand or personal account. The modern Instagram feed is designed to showcase vertical content, and posting in a rectangular format, specifically a portrait orientation, gives you a competitive edge.

• They Take Up More Screen Space: A vertical portrait post (with a 4:5 aspect ratio) fills more of the user's phone screen than a square post. More screen real estate means your content is more dominant, more immersive, and more likely to make someone stop their scroll. It literally pushes competitor content out of view.
• Better for Certain Compositions: Let's be honest, not every great shot fits neatly into a square. Full-body outfit photos, majestic architectural shots, and beautiful portraits often need that extra vertical space to breathe. Similarly, stunning landscape photography, group photos, and cinematic frames look far better in their intended horizontal rectangular format. Stripping them of their original composition just weakens their impact.
• Create a Dynamic Visual Feed: While consistency is admirable, a feed that mixes squares with vertical and horizontal rectangles can feel more organic, visually interesting, and professional. It breaks up the monotony and allows you to choose the best format for each individual piece of content, rather than forcing everything into one shape.

First, Understand Instagram’s Aspect Ratios

Before jumping into the "how," it's helpful to know the rules of the road. An aspect ratio is simply the proportional relationship between an image’s width and its height. Instagram's main feed supports three primary aspect ratios for posts:

• Square (1:1): The classic Instagram format. The width and height are equal. A common size is 1080 x 1080 pixels.
• Portrait (4:5): This is the tallest vertical format allowed for a standard feed post. The image is taller than it is wide. For best results, use a size of 1080 x 1350 pixels. This is the format that gives you the most screen real estate.
• Landscape (1.91:1): This is the widest horizontal format allowed. The image is wider than it is tall. A recommended size is 1080 x 566 pixels.

Keep these numbers in mind. If your photo or video is *taller* than 4:5 or *wider* than 1.91:1, Instagram will force you to crop it. But don't worry, there's a simple workaround for that which we'll cover next.

How to Post Rectangular Photos Directly in the Instagram App

For most photos that fall within the portrait or landscape limits, you don’t need any external apps. Instagram has a built-in feature to handle this, though it’s surprisingly easy to miss. Follow these simple steps.

Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Open Instagram and Start a New Post: Tap the plus icon (+) at the bottom of your screen to create a new post, just like you normally would.
2. Select Your Photo (or Photos): Choose the image you want to upload from your phone’s gallery. By default, Instagram will present it in a square crop.
3. Find the “Expand” Icon: This is the critical step. In the bottom left corner of the photo preview, you'll see a small icon with two outward-pointing arrows (it looks like this: <, >,).
4. Tap to Fit: Tap this icon once. Your photo will instantly zoom out to its original aspect ratio - either portrait or landscape. You can tap it again to toggle back to the square crop.
5. Adjust as Needed: You can still use your fingers to pinch and drag the photo to adjust the framing slightly, but the overall rectangular shape will be preserved.
6. Continue to Edit and Post: From here, just hit "Next" and proceed with adding filters, captions, hashtags, and location tags as you normally would before posting.

This trick works for single image posts, video posts, and even individual images within a multi-photo carousel post. Just remember to tap the expand icon for each photo in the carousel that you want to display in its rectangular format.

What if Your Photo is *Too* Wide or *Too* Tall?

So, you’ve tried the expand icon trick, but Instagram is still forcing you to crop your image. This usually happens when your photo’s dimensions exceed the platform's limits - for example, a super-wide panoramic photo or an extra-tall infographic.

The solution is to add borders (also known as padding) to your image *before* uploading it to Instagram. By adding blank space to the top and bottom of a wide photo (or to the sides of a tall photo), you can effectively change its overall aspect ratio to fit Instagram’s 1.91:1 or 4:5 guidelines without sacrificing any of your original image.

This might sound complicated, but it's incredibly easy with free design tools.

Easy Tools for Pre-Editing Your Photos

You don't need Photoshop for this. Simple, powerful apps can get this done in seconds.

• Canva: One of the most popular and user-friendly tools available on both desktop and mobile. It has pre-sized templates for Instagram posts, making this process effortless.
• Adobe Express: A fantastic free alternative to Canva from the makers of Photoshop, with similar features and ease of use.
• InShot (Mobile): While it's known as a video editor, InShot is excellent for quick photo edits too. Its "Canvas" feature is perfect for adding backgrounds or borders to images.

Mini-Tutorial: Using Canva to Add Borders

Here’s how to quickly prepare an extra-wide photo for Instagram using Canva:

1. Create a New Design: Open Canva and select "Create a design." Search for "Instagram Post (Portrait)" which will give you a blank 1080 x 1350 pixel canvas. This is the ideal canvas for grabbing maximum screen space.
2. Upload Your Photo: Go to the "Uploads" tab on the left, upload your panoramic image, and then drag it onto your blank canvas.
3. Position and Resize: Your image will likely overhang the canvas. Resize it so the left and right edges fit perfectly within the canvas width. This will leave blank space at the top and bottom. Center your image vertically.
4. Customize the Borders: You can leave the borders white for a clean, classic look, or you can click on the background canvas and change the color to match your brand or the photo’s aesthetic.
5. Download and Post: Click "Share," then "Download," and save the image as a JPG or PNG. Now, when you upload this new file to Instagram, it’s already a perfect 4:5 portrait, and the app won't try to crop it. Your full panoramic view is preserved in the middle.

Don't Forget About Rectangular Videos and Reels

The same principles apply to video content, but with slightly different best practices for each format.

Feed Videos

For regular videos that you post to your grid, the optimal aspect ratio is 4:5 (portrait). It provides the same screen-dominating benefits as a portrait photo. Landscape (1.91:1) is also an option, but the vertical format tends to perform better because it's more immersive.

Instagram Reels

For Reels, the game changes. The ideal aspect ratio is 9:16. This is the fullscreen vertical format that apps like TikTok and YouTube Shorts also use. While you *can* post a rectangular 4:5 or horizontal video as a Reel, Instagram will add black borders to fill the rest of the screen. This makes your content look smaller and less native to the platform. For the best experience, always aim to shoot or edit your Reels in the 9:16 format to take full advantage of the screen.

Final Thoughts

Mastering the art of the rectangular post gives you more creative control and helps your content stand out in a crowded feed. Whether you’re using the simple in-app expand tool or adding borders with a free app like Canva, you now have everything you need to break free from the square and post your photos exactly as you intended.

Once you've got your content perfectly formatted, the next step is planning how it all looks together. To help with that, we built Postbase with a clean, visual calendar that lets you see your entire content strategy at a glance. You can drag and drop your beautifully crafted rectangular posts to know exactly how your feed will look ahead of time, ensuring a consistent and professional aesthetic without any of the usual scheduling headaches.