Cropping Images for Social Media, Websites and more

Marcus says the show was triggered by a client he had recently who wanted images cropped in a very specific way.
Back in the days of film Marcus says it was a lot simpler and to some photographers it was a badge of honour not to crop their images. There were of course a great deal of different film sized and ratios back then including:
35mm – which were a 2x3 ratio

6cmx6cm so a 1x1 ratio

6x7 ratio was also possible for magazine covers.

Large format 5x4 was also available

There also camera specifically for panoramic images that were a range of formats and sizes.

Back then once you had chosen your film that was about it. Now with websites and social media these is so more to think about and so many different sizes. And when shooting you need to think about what crop you will use at the end.
For example a website header might be a 2:1 ratio, quite cinematic, while an Instagram reel will be 16x9 in portrait mode, which is very challenging to shoot. Sam says when shooting for a website you need to remember that the images will be auto-croppped so it needs to cope with a range of crops. Marcus says when shooting a website banner think first about if there will be text over the image. If there will be ask for an overlay so you can work out where the text would go on the image. View finders allow you to have crop marks (like rule of thirds) and these can help you think about the final crop you will have.
There are lots of sizes needed for social. For example for a profile banner a really wide thin shot is needed. Because there is such a range of image sized needed it’s important to ask the client what the client is going to use the images for. It’s a great value add for the customers providing them with pre-cropped images for different platforms and uses. Doing this also ensure that your images are shown in their best light when used.

Marcus loved the square Instagram photograph format, but with the move to reels being more popular, then this is a move away from squares to 16x9 portrait. As he has said before this is a challenging format to shoot in.
When thinking about cropping you also need to think about file size. If you are going to heavily crop an image you need to ensure it is a large file size that can cope with the crop.

Marcus suggests another thing that can make you stand out from other photographers is making videos from still images and giving them to your client. Marcus suggests using Canva for this and Sam suggests using CapCut. Marcus says making gifs for clients is another thing you can do them.