Use Expand AI to Perfect Your Social Media Visuals
Reformatting images across social media platforms gets complicated quickly. Instagram posts typically require a square (1:1) or portrait (4:5) aspect ratio, while Instagram Stories and Reels favor narrow vertical dimensions (9:16). Pinterest graphics are vertical but slightly wider (2:3). Facebook event covers (1.91:1), LinkedIn headers (4:1), and Twitter headers (3:1) all need a wider, horizontal format, but each platform has its own optimal dimensions, making it necessary to resize each time. Not to mention there’s often a mismatch between your camera settings and these platform standards to begin with.
Enter Expand AI: A simple but powerful AI tool designed to expand your photo canvas by creating additional realistic background content. Unlike traditional cropping, which can lead to awkward compositions and cut-off subjects, Expand AI doesn’t cut anything out. Rather, it makes your photos bigger by generating realistic backgrounds around your original image. Simply input your desired aspect ratio and the AI software will analyze your image, produce a new background based on context, and seamlessly blend these new elements into your initial photo.
How Does Expand AI Improve Your Social Media Content?
Expand AI ensures you keep all the original details of your photo intact while still meeting your exact specified dimensions. This means you can transform a panoramic travel snapshot into a vertical IG story without sacrificing any of the breathtaking scenery, fit portrait product shots perfectly into your next LinkedIn announcement, resize mobile photos for YouTube thumbnails, and more.
Whether you're a content creator, digital marketer, small business owner, or just looking to improve the look of your personal social media, Expand AI offers the ultimate flexibility and efficiency in resizing your images for different platforms.
How to Use Expand AI Resize Social Media Images
Start by choosing an image that needs to be resized. Let’s say you have a horizontal image that you want to upload to Instagram. Instagram once favored square images, but now works better with 4:5 portraits that take up more space on a mobile phone screen. Cropping it down to size will result in a tight crop and low resolution. Expand AI, on the other hand, can size your image up while maintaining the same quality – and all it takes it three easy steps.
Step 1: Upload Your Photo
Upload your photo directly into the Expand AI tool, or access Expand AI from the Photo Editor’s Edit menu. You'll notice your current photo dimensions displayed on the canvas.
Step 2: Select an Aspect Ratio and Expand
Choose your desired new aspect ratio from the preset dropdown menu. Here you’ll find almost every preset you could need for social media or print, but if you can’t find one, you also have the option to input a custom ratio.
A ratio of 4:5 is perfect for your Instagram post – make sure to select Portrait to better meet Instagram’s specifications. You’ll instantly see the new crop appear around your photo. You can move your image around to generate more background in a specific area – for instance, by moving this image toward the bottom, the AI will generate more sky.
Click Expand AI and let the tool work its magic. In seconds, you’ll have newly generated background content that seamlessly blends in with your original photo.
Use the Fade Edge slider to adjust the transition where new and old content meet. If you’re not completely happy with the new background, you can always Generate Again. Once you’re finished, click Apply for your changes to take effect.
Step 3: Save and Share Your Social Image
Once you’re satisfied with your expanded image, simply click the Save button at the top of the canvas and save as a high-quality PNG for the best digital resolution.
Your photo is now the perfect size and ready to be posted directly to your Instagram feed. No compositional awkwardness, no blurring or pixelation, and no visual compromises – just attention-grabbing content that both the algorithm and your audience will love.
More Ways to Enhance Your Social Media Presence With Expand AI
Expand AI is practical for many areas of social media, from your profile to posts to video thumbnails. Here are just a few ways you can use Expand AI to drastically improve your social media game:
Fix Crops of Social Media Profile Pictures
Modern profile pictures often face awkward cropping issues, with faces either too tightly cropped or too small in the frame. Expand AI can generate additional negative space around your portrait to ensure your face fits into circular frames just right.
For an even more eye-catching profile picture, use Artsy effects to turn your portrait into a painting, sketch, or cartoon.
Expand Travel Photos for Reels & TikTok
Travel photos, particularly landscape-oriented ones, can be tricky to fit vertically into TikTok or Instagram Reel covers. By simply cropping or zooming you, you risk cutting out most of the image. Expand AI can reorient your image to preserve the scenic beauty while still filling every inch of space. Try out these travel photo editing tips to make your stories even more scroll-stopping.
Create Event Covers From Tight Photos
Need a Facebook event cover photo but only have tightly framed shots or vertical images? Expand AI intuitively generates more room around your central image, perfecting your event covers without distorting important visual elements or causing uncomfortable cropping. This example expands an image for a wine tasting event.
Make Pinterest Graphics from Landscapes
Pinterest thrives on tall, vertical images, with square and landscape photos often falling short. Use Expand AI to lengthen your images and then plug them into any of BeFunky’s Pinterest templates for super-pinnable graphics. If you’re trying to up your Pinterest game even further, check out this article on creating viral Pins!
Adjust Composition for Better Instagram Photos
Sometimes your image is almost perfect, but the composition is slightly – or totally – off. To fix this without any loss in image quality, use Expand AI to enlarge your canvas, then use the Crop tool to achieve a more balanced composition.
Expand Photos for Profile Header Images
Profile header and banner images on LinkedIn, X/Twitter, and YouTube have wide, short aspect ratios that are difficult to meet. Zooming in often makes the image feel too cramped, while resizing leads to harsh cropping or squashing. Expand AI elegantly fills out these unusual dimensions to make your profile headers look both more appealing and professional.
Boost Engagement With Expanded Photos
With visuals being so important for online communication and engagement algorithms becoming harder and harder to please, it’s pretty much a non-negotiable to follow social media image dimension guidelines. Until now, the reformatting process was a painstaking manual ordeal that required plenty of cropping and tweaking – but all this has changed with Expand AI. Just plug in your desired aspect ratio, let the tool instantly resize your image to the optimal dimensions, and get to posting. Witness the magic of Expand AI and transform your social media content today!
