What image size should I use when uploading photos to 500px?
Asked 3/26/2012
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2 answers
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I’m uploading photos to 500px and want to know what dimensions to optimize for before exporting. The site name suggests 500 pixels, but that doesn’t seem to match current display sizes. What image dimensions does 500px actually use for display?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
14y ago
2 Answers
8
From their relevant Support page: width 880px for photos in landscape orientation, height 900px for images in portrait orientation. Even when you submit your images in that size, they will still get resized for display in thumbnails, and on iOS devices. Oh, and your carefully prepared originals in correct size are still recompressed into smaller files.
The name is a leftover from early days of digital photography, when 500 pixels was a suitable size for longer edge of images distributed over slower-than-today connections and displayed on CRT monitors.
Originally by user4390. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user4390
14y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
500px does not use 500 pixels as the display size. According to the community answers, photos are displayed much larger today, with images shown up to 2048px on the long edge. An older support reference mentioned display sizes around 880px wide for landscape and 900px tall for portrait in some views, with additional resizing for thumbnails and mobile devices.
In practice, 500px will resize and recompress uploads for different display contexts, so there isn’t a single exact export size that guarantees perfect presentation everywhere. If you want a sensible upload target, preparing images at up to 2048px on the long edge should match the larger display size mentioned, while accepting that the site may still generate smaller or more compressed versions for some users and devices.
The “500px” name is just historical and no longer reflects the actual display resolution.
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