Instagram photos stop at 3:4: crop a 9:16 frame to 1080x1440

Instagram's help page on photo resolution says photos can have an aspect ratio between 1.91:1 and 3:4, which at 1080 pixels wide means a height between 566 and 1440. A 9:16 frame, 1080x1920, is taller than that, so Instagram would crop it for you. To choose what is cut, crop the clip to 1080x1440 with Sume's video filter and pull the still from the result.

The limits are from Image resolution of photos you share on Instagram (read 2026-10-03). It says that if a photo's aspect ratio is not supported, it will be cropped to fit a supported ratio. It does not say where the crop falls, which is why choosing it yourself is safer.

The crop arithmetic

Going from 1080x1920 to 1080x1440 keeps the full width and 75 percent of the height, 1440 / 1920. That removes 480 pixels in total. Centred, 240 come off the top and 240 off the bottom, so the crop starts at y = 0.125 of the frame. If a face sits high in the shot, start higher, for example y = 0.05, and the crop ends at 0.80.

Crop with video filter

Video filter takes crop rectangles as fractions of the source frame: x and y from 0 to 1, width and height from 0.05 to 1, with the sum of each pair at most 1. The compiler rounds to even sizes for yuv420p. You can run the free POST /v1/video-filter/check first. An encode costs $0.02, and the source clip can run to 300 seconds.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-filter \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: crop-3x4-001" \
  -d '{
    "video_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/clip.mp4",
    "ops": [{ "op": "crop", "x": 0, "y": 0.125, "width": 1, "height": 0.75 }]
  }'

Pull the still at source size

Video frames extracts stills at the times you name, as durable image artifacts. Leave max_edge out to keep the source size, and pass format: "png" if you want it lossless. Point video_url at the cropped MP4 and pick the instant with at, in seconds. The 1080x1440 result sits at the tall end of Instagram's photo range.

Width matters too

The same page says photos between 320 and 1080 pixels wide keep their resolution, photos wider than 1080 are reduced to 1080, and photos under 320 are enlarged to that minimum. So 1080 wide is the useful ceiling, and a 2160-wide still only adds file size.