One design, every shape: what moves, what shrinks and what you still fix by hand
To resize a post for every platform, build it once in portrait, duplicate it for each platform and re-lay each copy to its shape: square for the grid, 9:16 for stories, 2:3 for Pinterest. The re-lay is where it goes wrong, because a new aspect ratio is not a bigger or smaller version of the old one; it is a different amount of room on each axis.
This guide is about that re-lay: what happens to a headline, a logo, a background photo and a centred product when the shape changes, how dump's Magic Resize makes those calls, and the three things you still check by hand. The sizes themselves live in the Instagram post size guide; here they are only starting points.
Why resizing a post is not the same as scaling it
Take a portrait post at 1080 by 1440. The story version, 1080 by 1920, adds 480 pixels of height and no width at all. The square, 1080 by 1080, removes 360 pixels of height. The Pinterest Pin, 1000 by 1500, trims 80 pixels of width and adds 60 of height. A 16:9 landscape at 1920 by 1080 is the opposite shape entirely. Stretching distorts; scaling to fit leaves empty bars; scaling to fill crops. Each element wants a different answer, which is why one scale button breaks the post and most people rebuild by hand.
What changes between portrait, square, story and Pinterest sizes
- Portrait to Story (1080 by 1920): the width is identical, so nothing needs to shrink. The problem is the new empty height. A photo that filled the portrait frame is now too short, so it grows by a third and loses a quarter of its width, or gets extended.
- Portrait to Square (1080 by 1080): you lose a quarter of the height. Everything shrinks to 75% so it still fits, and a full-bleed photo loses a quarter of its height. The square is where a text-heavy design suffers most.
- Portrait to Pinterest Pin (1000 by 1500): the gentlest change. Elements shrink to about 93% and a full-bleed photo loses about 11% off the sides.
- Portrait to Landscape (1920 by 1080): the hard one. Height is now the limit, so everything scales to 75%, and a portrait photo covering a landscape frame loses more than half its height. This is the format to rethink, not resize.
Magic Resize: a Studio feature, free to try in the editor. Exports are never watermarked.
How Magic Resize decides where everything goes
Magic Resize, a Studio feature, reads what each element is doing on the page and applies the matching rule:
- One scale for everything. Every element resizes by a single uniform factor, the smaller of the width change and the height change, so nothing is ever stretched or squashed. That is where the 75% and 93% above come from.
- Position by proportion. An element floating in the page keeps its relative position: a sticker a third of the way down stays a third of the way down.
- Edges stay edges. An element sitting on an edge, a logo in a corner or a headline against the top, is re-pinned to that edge, its margin kept as the same share of the page.
- Backgrounds re-cover. A photo that fills the page is scaled until it fills the new page, centred. A colour or gradient block that fills the page simply stretches, because there are no pixels to distort.
- Bands keep spanning. A strip across the full width, like a footer or a divider, stretches across the new width and scales in height with everything else.
- Text keeps its line breaks. A headline is shrunk if it would run past the new margins, never re-wrapped, because re-wrapping display type changes the design more than a slightly smaller headline does.
- Nothing is deleted. Anything that would land off the page is walked back inside the nearest edge.
Before you commit, the modal shows a Now and an After preview rendered from your real canvas. When the background photo would be cropped hard, it says by roughly how much and offers Extend the photo with AI, which paints the missing margins for 40 credits instead of cropping. One undo puts the old format back.
How to make one design in every size
- 1Build the master in portrait
Start on the Instagram Post preset, 1080 by 1440. Portrait is the middle shape: the story adds room, the square removes it, and both directions are easier from the middle than from either extreme.
- 2Clone the page once per platform
In the Pages section, Clone duplicates the page. One document holds up to 10 pages, so the feed post, the square, the story, the pin and a landscape all fit in one file.
- 3Resize each clone
Open Resize to another format from the top toolbar, pick the canvas in the pill row, choose Story, Square, Pinterest Pin, Landscape or a custom size, check the After preview and apply. It works on one canvas at a time.
- 4Export every page at once
Export gives one file per page, or a single ZIP on desktop with Download as ZIP switched on. A free account exports at native HD, and no plan adds a watermark.
What to fix by hand after resizing
- The story safe zone. Margins are kept as a share of the page, not as a distance from the story interface. A headline 50 pixels from the top of the portrait post lands about 67 pixels from the top of the story, right under the profile picture and the progress bar. Drag it below the top 250 pixels, and keep the bottom 250 clear for the reply field.
- Text size on the square. At 75% a caption that was comfortable becomes small on a phone. Bump the headline back up or cut words.
- The subject in a re-covered photo. Covering crops from the centre, so a face or a product placed off-centre can lose an edge. Reposition the photo inside its frame, or tick Extend instead of cropping.
Resizing without Studio, and resizing carousels
Magic Resize is part of Studio and works on single-page designs only. A carousel is one wide strip of slides, and re-laying it would mean deciding which slide each element belongs to in the new shape, so the modal stops and says carousels keep their shape. Turn the carousel into separate posts with the Separate posts toggle, then resize the one you want.
On any plan you can still change a page's size from the Canvas row in the right panel. The page changes and the elements stay where they were, so you move them yourself using the same rules: pin what sat on an edge, keep the background covering, keep the middle element in the middle. Slower, but the decisions are identical.
Canvas presets: free with an account. Exports are never watermarked.
Frequently asked questions
Build the design once in portrait at 1080 by 1440, duplicate it for each platform, and re-lay each copy: 1080 by 1920 for stories, 1000 by 1500 for a Pinterest Pin. In dump, Magic Resize (Studio) re-lays a copy in one click, keeping edge elements pinned, background photos covering and headlines on their original line breaks.
Not with Magic Resize in dump, which works on single-page designs only. Convert the carousel into separate posts and resize the one you need, or rebuild the carousel at the new size. Every slide in a carousel shares one shape anyway, so the change applies to all of them.
A photo that fills the whole design has to cover the new shape, and when the proportions change it has more of one axis than it needs. Portrait to square crops a quarter of the height; portrait to landscape crops more than half. dump's Magic Resize shows the crop before you apply it and can extend the photo with AI for 40 credits instead.
Yes. On any plan you can change a page's size from the Canvas row; the page takes the new size and the elements stay where they were, so you rearrange them by hand. Magic Resize, which re-lays every element automatically, is a Studio feature.
Part of sizes, formats and exports. Start from the main guide: Instagram post sizes, and the one rule that keeps your design from being cropped