Square, 4:5 or 3:4: which crop for which platform

Aspect ratio is the least glamorous decision in a headshot and one of the few that is genuinely objective. There is a right answer per destination, and it is usually not the shape your camera produced.

The short version

Square (1:1) for anything that displays as a circle or a square avatar. That is LinkedIn, Slack, Teams, Zoom, most company directories, most comment systems, most of the internet.

4:5 or 3:4 portrait for anything that displays a rectangle: a speaker page, an about page, a press kit, a printed programme.

Landscape almost never, for a headshot. If something wants a wide image it usually wants a banner with you off to one side, which is a different photo.

If you only make one, make the square. It covers the majority of uses and it is the one that gets seen daily.

Why square wins for avatars

Because avatars are circles, and a circle drawn inside a square wastes the least.

Give a platform a portrait rectangle and it will crop the middle out to get a square, then cut a circle from that. You have now had two crops applied by software that does not know where your face is. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it takes the top of your head off.

Cropping to square yourself means you decide what survives. It takes ten seconds and removes the guesswork.

Why portrait exists at all

A portrait rectangle has room for shoulders and a little of the environment, which makes it read as a photograph rather than an avatar. That suits places where your picture is presented at size and in context: a speaker bio, a team page with a grid of large tiles, a printed programme.

Between 4:5 and 3:4, the difference is small. 4:5 is slightly tighter and matches what phones shoot in portrait mode on many devices. 3:4 gives a bit more room. Either is fine; pick whichever the destination asks for, and 4:5 if nobody said.

Shoot once, crop several times

This is the practical bit.

When you take the photo, leave more room around your head than any of the final crops need. Not a lot: enough that you can take a square out of the middle and a 4:5 out of the same frame without either one clipping you.

Then produce your crops from that one frame. The square is the tight one. The portrait keeps more shoulder.

What you must not do is crop tight in camera and then try to produce a portrait rectangle from it, because the only way to get a taller shape out of a tight square is to add space that does not exist.

Where the face should sit

The rules are the same in every ratio, and they are worth repeating because they decide more than the shape does.

Eyes at roughly 40 to 45 per cent from the top. Not the middle. Eyes in the centre of the frame reads as a passport photo.

Head filling 55 to 70 per cent of the height. Less than that and you are unrecognisable at small sizes.

A little space above the head, not a third of the frame. And never so tight that the crown is cut, which is the one mistake that cannot be undone. We wrote about what to do when it has already happened.

In a square, those proportions produce a head-and-shoulders crop. In a 4:5, the same eye line leaves more room below, which is where the extra shoulder goes.

A note on circles, again

Whatever ratio you export, if the destination is a circle, check it as a circle before uploading. Anything in a corner is gone, and a head positioned slightly off-centre loses more than you expect.

The easiest check: crop your image to a circle in any editor, or just imagine the largest circle that fits and see what falls outside it.

Producing them

If you are doing this by hand, crop the square first and the portrait second, both from the original, rather than cropping the square and then trying to build the portrait from it.

If you would rather not, this tool offers 1:1, 4:5, 3:4 and 2:3 and frames each one on the eye line rather than on the centre of the image, so the proportions above come out right automatically. It runs in your browser and takes about four seconds per crop.

Frequently asked questions

What aspect ratio is a LinkedIn profile photo?

Square. It is displayed as a circle cut from a square, so supplying a square means you control the crop rather than letting the platform guess.

Is 4:5 or 3:4 better for a headshot?

Either. 4:5 is slightly tighter and matches many phones’ portrait output. Use whatever the destination specifies, and 4:5 if it does not.

Can I turn a square photo into a portrait one?

Not without inventing space that was never photographed. Shoot with a little room around you and produce both crops from the same original.

Where should my eyes be in the frame?

About 40 to 45 per cent of the way down, in any aspect ratio. Centred eyes read as a passport photo.

Does the same photo work everywhere?

The same frame does, if you shot with a little room around you. The same crop usually does not, because circles and rectangles want different things.