Profile photo
Recommended: 400 × 400 px, square, under 8 MB. Displayed at 152 × 152 px on desktop, 96 × 96 px on mobile, but LinkedIn keeps the original for zoom — upload at 400+ for sharpness on retina screens.
Avoid full-face crops that fill every pixel — leave 20 % whitespace around the head. Algorithmic crops on tiny avatars cut foreheads first.
Background / cover banner
Recommended: 1584 × 396 px (4:1). On mobile, ~35 % of the banner is hidden behind the profile photo and name card — design with a clear safe zone in the right two-thirds.
Photo banners look amateur; bold typography or product/brand screenshots convert profile visits to follows 2–3× better. Keep the file under 4 MB.
Feed post images (single image)
- Square (highest engagement): 1200 × 1200 px.
- Portrait (takes the most screen real estate on mobile): 1080 × 1350 px.
- Landscape: 1200 × 627 px — same aspect as link previews.
- Avoid 1920 × 1080 — LinkedIn pillarboxes it on mobile and you lose 22 % of vertical space.
Carousel / PDF document posts
Upload as a PDF; LinkedIn treats each page as a swipeable slide. Use 1080 × 1350 (portrait) or 1080 × 1080 (square) — anything wider gets letterboxed on mobile.
Optimal length: 8–12 slides. The first slide is a thumb-stop hook; the last is a 'follow me for more' or single CTA. Carousels currently get 1.5–2× the dwell time of single images.
Link preview images (Open Graph)
When you paste a URL, LinkedIn fetches the page's `og:image` tag. Use 1200 × 627 px (the same aspect as Facebook). Anything smaller than 600 × 315 is rejected; anything taller than 1.91:1 gets cropped from the bottom.
Articles (LinkedIn Pulse)
Cover image: 1280 × 720 px (16:9). In-body images: width up to 744 px. Use the same image as your blog cover for cross-platform consistency.
Company page
- Logo: 300 × 300 px.
- Cover: 1128 × 191 px (note: smaller than personal banners — different system).
- Life-tab hero: 1128 × 376 px.
- Page featured image: 1128 × 376 px.
LinkedIn ads
- Single image ad: 1200 × 627 px (1.91:1) or 1200 × 1200 px (square).
- Carousel ad: 1080 × 1080 px per card, 2–10 cards.
- Video ad thumbnail: 1280 × 720 px.
- Message ad banner: 300 × 250 px.
File formats and quality
Use JPEG for photos (quality 85 is the sweet spot — visually indistinguishable from 100 but 35 % smaller). Use PNG for screenshots with text, charts, UI. WebP uploads are accepted but LinkedIn re-encodes them to JPEG, so there's no quality advantage.
Keep file sizes under 5 MB for posts, under 8 MB for banners. LinkedIn's CDN re-compresses anything larger, often visibly.
Mobile-first design rules
70 % of LinkedIn feed engagement happens on mobile. Text in images must be readable at 50 % of the original size. Use sans-serif fonts at 28+ px equivalent. Avoid 4-quadrant infographics — they're unreadable below the fold.
Common mistakes
- Uploading an Instagram square (1080 × 1080) — looks fine but loses 250 px of mobile feed height vs a 1080 × 1350 portrait.
- Stretching low-res 800 px images to 1200 — LinkedIn's algorithm slightly down-weights blurry images.
- Forgetting alt text — alt text helps accessibility and is read by LinkedIn's classifier for content categorisation.
- Embedding a YouTube link instead of uploading native video — native video gets 5–7× more reach.
FAQ
- Does LinkedIn compress my images?
- Yes — every upload is re-encoded to LinkedIn's CDN format, regardless of original. Upload at 1.5× the displayed size to leave headroom for re-compression artefacts.
- Can I post 9:16 vertical images?
- Tall portraits beyond 1080 × 1350 (4:5) get cropped to 4:5 in the feed but open full-height on tap. Worth it for screenshots of long-form content.
- Best aspect ratio for personal-branding posts?
- Portrait 4:5 (1080 × 1350) — the most vertical real estate the algorithm allows. Carousels are second-best.
- Should I add my face to every banner?
- Personal accounts: yes if you've got a strong personal brand. Corporate pages: no — use product, customer or team imagery.
- Does LinkedIn support animated GIFs?
- Yes, in posts (not in profile photos). They count as images for the algorithm but autoplay silently. Keep under 5 MB.