The Exact Image Sizes Every Recipe Blogger Needs in 2026

Your hero image is the first thing a reader sees, and it does most of the work in making someone decide to stay on the page or bounce. For recipe blogs, the hero should be 1200 x 1200 pixels (square) or 1200 x 1800 pixels (2:3 portrait).

The square format is the safest choice — it works in blog layouts, RSS readers, and most social previews without awkward cropping. But the 2:3 portrait format has a huge advantage: it can double as your Pinterest pin image with a text overlay, saving you from creating a separate asset.

Shoot your hero with space above and below the dish. This breathing room gives you flexibility to crop to either square or portrait from the same original. If you frame too tightly, you are locked into one ratio.

Process photos — "dice the onions," "fold in the flour," "the dough should look like this" — are the backbone of recipe content. These do not need to be as large as your hero shot. 800 pixels wide at a 4:3 or 3:2 aspect ratio is the sweet spot.

At 800px, these images are sharp on standard displays and reasonably crisp on Retina screens while keeping file sizes manageable. A recipe post with 10-15 step photos can easily bloat to 10+ MB if each image is 1200px or wider. At 800px with good JPG compression (quality 85), you are looking at 80-150 KB per image — a major page speed improvement.

Keep step photos visually consistent: same lighting setup, same angle (overhead works best for process shots), same background. This consistency makes the recipe feel polished and lets readers focus on the cooking progression rather than adjusting to different visual styles between steps.

For most recipe bloggers, Pinterest drives more traffic than Google. The optimal pin image is 1000 x 1500 pixels (2:3 ratio). Pinterest previously rewarded extra-tall pins, but the algorithm and display now favor the standard 2:3 ratio. Anything taller gets cropped in the feed.

A high-performing recipe pin has three elements: an appetizing food photo, a clear recipe title in readable text, and your blog name or logo. Place the text in the top or bottom third, using a semi-transparent overlay if needed for legibility. Sans-serif fonts at bold weights work best at Pinterest's display sizes.

Create 2-3 pin variations for each recipe with different text placements and photos, then test which style gets the most saves and clicks. Resize your hero shot to Pinterest's standard pin size as your starting point.

Instagram displays images at a maximum of 1080 pixels wide. For recipe posts, use 1080 x 1350 pixels — the 4:5 portrait ratio. This is the tallest image Instagram allows in the feed, and it gives your food photo the maximum amount of screen real estate as followers scroll.

Square (1080 x 1080) is fine but takes up about 20% less feed space than 4:5. Over thousands of impressions, that difference in visual presence adds up. Unless your aesthetic specifically calls for square, go portrait. Resize your hero to Instagram's post dimensions with one click.

Your WordPress featured image serves double duty: it appears on your blog (in archive pages, related posts, sliders) and it is used as the Open Graph image when someone shares your post on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter/X.

The ideal Open Graph image is 1200 x 628 pixels (roughly 1.91:1). This is a landscape format — wider than it is tall. If your recipe hero is square or portrait, you will need a separate crop for this. Position the dish in the center and leave enough background for the wider frame. Resize to WordPress featured image dimensions here.

The efficient workflow is to shoot once and resize to everything. Start with your highest-resolution original, then produce each derivative size in one batch. For a single recipe post, that typically means 5-7 resized files from one hero shot, plus 10-15 step photos at a single size.

Use TinyResize's crop tool to cut each aspect ratio, then compress the batch for web. This takes minutes once you have the dimensions memorized — which, after reading this guide, you do.