How to resize an image for YouTube banner
- Select Choose files and pick your photo, or drop it on the box.
- The tool fills a 2560×1440 frame and trims equally from the longer side, so the middle of your photo stays. The file keeps the format of your original.
- Select Download and upload the result.
About the 2560×1440 size
A YouTube channel banner is a very large image, commonly published as 2560×1440 pixels at the time of writing, with only a central strip visible on most devices. YouTube shows different parts on TV, desktop and phone.
2560×1440 is a 16:9 landscape frame (width divided by height is 1.778) with 3,686,400 pixels, or 3.69 megapixels. The 16:9 shape is the same as a video frame, so a landscape photo keeps nearly all of its area. The visible part is much smaller, so put the key content in the centre.
What happens to your photo
The table shows how common source images are treated when the tool fills 2560×1440.
| Source | Scaling | Part of the picture kept |
|---|---|---|
| 4000×3000 phone photo | reduced to 64 percent | 75 percent |
| 3024×4032 portrait photo | reduced to 85 percent | 42 percent |
| 1920×1080 screenshot | enlarged 1.33× | 100 percent |
| 1080×1080 square | enlarged 2.37× | 56 percent |
Sources smaller than the frame are enlarged because the output size is fixed, which can look soft. Platforms change their guidance over time, so check YouTube banner requirements before you publish.
Tips
- Put the logo and channel name in the middle band, because phones show only a narrow strip.
- Check the file size limit on the platform. Large banners can be several megabytes.
- If it is too heavy, use compress to 2MB.
- See also: YouTube thumbnail size, resize for Twitter header, resize for Facebook cover, compress image to 2MB.
Your photos stay on your device. Nothing is uploaded, and there is no sign-up.