Webtool - Instagram Image Formatter
Instagram supports images in specific aspect ratios: square (1:1), portrait (4:5), and landscape (approximately 1.91:1). If you attempt to upload an image that doesn’t conform to these formats, Instagram automatically crops it to fit. For photographs, this cropping might yield acceptable results—you can shift and zoom the image slightly, and losing a bit around the edges may not matter. However, it’s impossible to crop an image without losing some portion of its borders. This becomes problematic for objects like playing cards, where maintaining the full image is essential.
For example, uploading the following playing card image:
Results in a cropped version like this:
To prevent this, you can manually add borders before uploading to adjust the image to an accepted Instagram ratio:
- Add side borders for a portrait image (height greater than width)
- Add top and bottom borders for a landscape image (width greater than height)
While this can be done with any image editing tool, we live in an age of custom-built, just-in-time software. As an experiment, I used AI to create a special tool: the Instagram Image Formatter. Of course I never would have developed this using traditional programming methods—it simply wouldn’t have been worth the effort.
But with AI, I was able to build this web application in just half an hour. You can upload an image, and the app automatically selects the appropriate Instagram format (portrait or landscape), adds the necessary borders, and allows you to download the reformatted image. You can choose between solid black borders or a more stylish blurred version. Additional border styles could have been easily added.
Since all processing is done in the browser using JavaScript, your images are never uploaded to a server, ensuring complete privacy.
