Image Size for Art Portfolio Website Uploads: Limits and Settings

Export at the largest size the site will display and no larger. A visitor on a laptop sees roughly 1500 to 2500 pixels across; anything beyond that is bytes the browser downloads and then throws away.

Squarespace states the numbers plainly. Its guide calls 2500 pixels ideal for most images and warns that images under 1500 pixels wide may look blurry on larger screens. It creates smaller copies of each upload at 100, 300, 500, 750, 1000, 1500 and 2500 pixels wide, so an upload wider than 2500 adds nothing a visitor can see. If that is your host, see our Squarespace image size guide. The same page lists a 20 MB upload limit and a 120 megapixel ceiling, and asks for 500 KB or less so pages load quickly. That is a gap of about 40 to 1 between what is accepted and what is recommended.

What is the ArtStation image size limit?

ArtStation’s help article on Marmoset scenes gives caps for one file type only: Marmoset Viewer files, 15 MB on a free account and 50 MB on Pro. This page quotes no figure for ordinary images. Check your project’s upload screen, and size art as you would for any portfolio: about 2500 pixels on the long side is a sensible ceiling, since few viewers show more.

What is the Behance image size?

Behance sets its own width and file-size rules, and this page quotes no Behance figure, so read its current help page before you export a case study. Whatever it says, the workflow below holds: export once at full size, resize copies, and check the largest file in the folder.

Set a maximum dimension first, then quality. Pixels do most of the work: a canvas painted at 6000 pixels wide, shown at 2500, carries more than five times the pixels it needs.

Why 90 for flat color? Smol’s JPEG output keeps full color detail from quality 90, while at 75 and below it stores color at lower resolution. Thin red or blue lines on a flat background are where that shows. If edges look soft, raise the quality, or compress to WebP or AVIF instead.

For scale, in our benchmark of 24 small photographs (768 × 512), Smol made PNGs 69.2% smaller at default settings, and compressing those PNGs to AVIF at quality 65 saved 92.1%. Those are small film photos, not your paintings. See the benchmark data for the conditions, then check one of your own files. Smol has no lossless mode for images, so an archive master stays a separate file.

Export your finals once from Procreate, Photoshop, Clip Studio or Krita, then let Smol make the web copies in one pass.

1. 1

   Export full-size finals to one folder

   PNG or TIFF at full resolution, in sRGB. This folder is your master and stays untouched, because Smol writes copies with a _compressed suffix by default.

2. 2

   Add the watermark, if you use one, before compressing

   Compress last, so the watermark is encoded once and you are comparing the sizes that will actually be uploaded.

3. 3

   Drag the folder into Smol

   Mixed batches are fine. Choose Compress, then an output format from the table above.

4. 4

   Set maximum dimension and quality

   2500 and 80 for portfolio pages, 1080 and 85 for Instagram. Smol sets quality and pixel size, not output bytes, so these are starting points.

5. 5

   Check the largest file and one detail

   Sort the output by size. Open the biggest file and zoom into a face or a thin line. Rerun at a lower quality only the files that miss your target.

Rather not touch the app each time? A Finder Quick Action compresses a selection from a right click.

Instagram resamples what you upload, on its own terms, so size the file yourself first. We use 1080 pixels on the long side as a starting point, a choice of ours rather than an Instagram figure.

• Resize to 1080 pixels on the long side yourself, so you see what Instagram will show.
• Use quality 85 JPG as a starting point, and avoid uploading an already heavily compressed file; each pass loses detail.
• Sharpen lightly after downsizing if fine hatching turns to gray. Do that in your art app, before Smol.
• Post a crop of the detail as a second slide, since the first view is small.

Instagram’s own treatment of line art is not documented here, so judge by posting one test image first. If you also sell prints, see upscaling art for print-on-demand.

It can. A watermark is extra pixels the encoder has to describe, and a semi-transparent logo over a smooth gradient is harder to compress than the gradient alone. We have not measured the effect, so compare your own before and after.

• Watermark at the final export size, not on the 6000 px original, so the mark scales with the image.
• Place it over detailed areas where it costs fewer bytes and is harder to crop out.
• Remember that metadata is not a watermark. Smol strips EXIF, IPTC and XMP from images by default, which removes embedded copyright and contact fields; switch that off if you want them kept.

For why those fields matter, see what EXIF data contains and how to remove it on a Mac.

Start with what your art app and your Mac already do. They are free and often enough.

Our comparison of every Mac method runs the same files through each.

• You need print masters. Compression always re-encodes, so keep originals and send printers the master.
• You need vector or SVG output. Smol does not write SVG.
• You need to add watermarks, signatures or borders. Do that in your art app.
• You need pixel-identical optimization. That is a job for a lossless tool such as ImageOptim; see the head-to-head.
• You post one image a month. Your export dialog is enough.