: Instagram Desktop Version - Profile Pic Blurry/Pixelated Question....I am trying to use a logo as a profile pic on Instagram. On my phone it looks fine but on my desktop it looks very pixelated.

@Turnbaugh909

You're welcome. I doubt colour choice would affect the clarity of the image but you could try a black and white version to prove me wrong. To be honest, I'm not exactly sure if what you're seeing is what I'm seeing, and if the image in your post is accurately reflecting what others will see either.

There reason I say that is because when I view your Instagram page on my iMac with Retina Display, your logo looks as sharp and crisp as the Instagram logo itself.



Your logo is downscaled by 50% but displays with twice the resolution on my Retina Display so it looks great. When viewed at 100% on its own, though, it still looks a bit soft and muddled but not as much as the image you posted. It does the same to my sample logo, though, likely due to high compression.

As my reputation doesn't allow me to add comments, I can only post answers and I don't know if this even qualifies but I will view it on my regular iMac screen to see how it looks and edit this post with the results. Perhaps you could post a link to download the 640px file itself?

Update: Converting the PNG you posted to a max quality JPG and posting it to my Instagram profile does yield a softness on my regular iMac screen, and it does the same with my test logo. With a regular screen, Instagram serves up the 150px version only and upscales it to 152px. It does appear to be the result of their compression so you're most likely to get the best results by posting a 640px or more uncompressed PNG file via your phone instead of a JPG. It might be worthwhile trying black and white or even another colour to see how the compression affects the contrast and legibility. Good luck!

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@Caterina889

Looking at the code for Target's profile pic, you can see the native file size is 150px square, upscaled to 152 px square. It would appear theirs never existed on the server at a size larger than 150px and likely appears so rough due to a JPG being recompressed on upload.



I replaced my profile picture with an image similar to yours (white text and graphic on flat colour) and it displays perfectly fine on my Retina Display. The original photo was much larger (1985px square) and saved to the server at 320px. The code indicates they then downscaled that image from the native 320px square to 152px square on desktop.

(I hope the sample below appears sharp for you, it's looking soft for me as I saved it at 72 ppi from my 144 ppi Retina screenshot. I can assure you it looked super sharp on my profile in-browser.)



From what you described, it doesn't sound like you have any issues viewing and creating files, you'd immediately see any blurriness in Photoshop and Illustrator when viewed at 100%.

In case you haven't already, try uploading a large file through their desktop version. Save it at the highest quality JPG setting, too, as they don't allow PNGs. I tried one at 320px and it came out blurry and saved natively at 150px for some reason. Make sure it's at least 640px, that size looked exactly the same as my 1985px version.

In case it clarifies, here you can see the difference in how the 320px upload compares to the 1985px and 640px uploads (the latter 2 look the same).

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