hi guys welcome or welcome back thanks so much for joining me
today we're going to go through exporting and preparing your images for instagram
hello there fellow photographers i'm jess i run this youtube channel and basically
i i just kind of do like photography tips and stuff release a video every single week here on
youtube and then also we've got loads of different stuff going over on the website too so if you care
go and have a look but if not don't worry about it it would be great to see you here again so i
hit the subscribe button hit that bell icon the bell icon gives you a notification every single
time i upload a youtube video okay so that's that today we're going to go through a question
that i get asked reasonably regularly for those who are maybe not instagram legends posting to
instagram especially with photography work can be a little bit convoluted and confusing because of
the different steps involved so today we're going to go through a 10 step sounds a lot but it's it's
really quite straightforward step by step tutorial for posting your images on instagram and retaining
your original crop ratio okay so let's get stuck in i'm i'm gonna just kind of assume that
we're gonna meet together at this youtube video when you finish your edit okay so you finish
your edit in photoshop and we've basically got all of the layers still available still visible
on that side which gives us our starting point okay so the first thing that i'm going to want
you to do is flatten your image so we're going to right click in the empty space next to a layer and
choose flatten image and when the image is flattened down to a single background layer
that's when we can kind of start looking at the adjustments that we need to make for social media
so number one is flatten number two is it change to 8-bit now you might already be working in 8-bit
but it's definitely worth a check you want to go up into image into mode and make sure we're on
eight bits okay so that is step number two step number three is to go into edit and go down to
convert to profile now again you might already be working in the correct profile for
the internet but if not you want to go into convert to profile now in this window
you can see your current source and then a destination space we're going to want
to go into this list and find somewhere in that list one that says sRGB IEC61966-2.1
okay it's sRGBwe click on sRGB leave your settings as they are here seen on this
screen and then click ok now we're at the point where this could viably be a
jpeg for the internet but there's a few more steps right because instagram can only show
portrait images to a maximum ratio of a 4:5 crop now i think this is a four or five crop
no it's not it's not a 4:5 crop do you see the little gap here that would be completely lost
on instagram so sometimes you might be posting portrait images that are actually really tall and
really thin and in those instances you're kind of losing the rest of the image so what we're
going to go through is the next couple of steps is basically to prevent that from happening so you're
going to do one version which is going to be on the front that's like the full feed then we're
going to do a carousel because the second image is going to be uncropped right so perfect for monthly
challenges just saying so i want you to stop here where we are now we're flattened we've converted
we're in 8-bit okay at this point i want you to go and find your watermark there's a video all about
that and pop that somewhere near the subject okay so that is step number four i'm going to go ahead
and find my watermark over here in libraries that is in that tutorial i just mentioned by the way
and we're going to place it close to the subject okay and then i'm going to switch
it to soft light and turn it down so it's like basically barely visible but it exists
so when you get to here i'm going to want you to go ahead again and flatten this image off
right so we're going to flatten the image and now we're at the point where we can start creating our
build formats to do this and to do this easily i like to just create two copies of the same image
so we're going to go up in to image and then choose duplicate and what this is going to do
basically is it's going to make an exact copy of this file so this one is going to be our instagram
crop so i'm going to call it ig cropped right with ig cropped this is a separate file okay and
then i'm going to go into image and duplicate it again and do ig full so we've got now three
copies one the original one we've named it but it's exactly the same and the other one we've
named it and it's exactly the same so that is step number five i wanna say i think i think we're on
step number five stick with me here okay step number six is to get your crop for your cropped
version so we're gonna go for the crop tool if your image is landscape go for a square if your image is
portrait go for a 4:5 crop because that gives you the best that you can get so we're gonna
go for a four or five crop in the ratio what you need to bear in mind if you're doing your
portrait ones by the way top tip is that this is going to crop square anyway so afterwards on your
personal grid it's going to crop square so i'm kind of keeping in mind the fact that we're
going gonna have some croppage on the top and bottom so i'm gonna go for a 4:5 crop
and bring it in on all sides just slightly okay this is fine so that is my cropped version
then i'm gonna go back to my other image which is ig full i'm going to keep the same crop ratio okay
so if you were square you stay square if you were 4:5 you stay 4:5 then what we're
going to do is click once and instead of cropping in we're going to crop out so we're going to
pull out and pull out so essentially photoshop is having to add pixels somewhere right i'm going to
make sure that the delete cropped pixels is on okay delete crop pixels is on it just because it
keeps it nice and straight forward for you and then your background color down here that is
the color that is being filled in i'm just going to flip it so we can see the empty space around
the edges and click ok so that's locked in now it's a four five it's cropped but we've got the
additional space on the side i'll include some other examples on the screen now of images that
have had this treatment to basically give you a flavor of what it ends up being like
so now we've got a cropped version for the grid and a full version for the carousel so then all
we need to do is go ahead and resize it because we've done everything else so i think we're on
like step eight now but dan will correct me if i'm wrong by putting the right numbers at
the bottom here but we're going to just go ahead and resize and the resizing is exactly the same
for both so we're going to go to image image size and then in the dialog box that comes up
we're going to make sure that the longest side so pick the longest side the biggest number here we
want to keep an eye on that that's our target but first we go to resolution and we change it to 200
then we find the biggest number longest side and we change it to 2000 pixels
that gives us our instagram sized image we then do the exact same thing on the other one image
image size 200 pixels per inch longest side pixels height 2000 that gives us instagram sized images
then all that's left to do is save that out so we're going to go to file save as and find where
you want to save it okay we'll go into here this is fine and i'm going to call it uh fracky ig full
and then it needs to be saved as a jpeg and then the jpeg we need to make sure we're embedding
the color profile very important then we come on to this little screen here have preview checked
and your aim is to have this number under a thousand so this is absolutely fine this is like
teeny weeny i'm gonna go with full quality usually 10 is good okay we click ok on that one that one
is then saved i can close it and then this one we go file save as i go to the same location
i call it frecky ig cropped we change it to a jpeg it's got the color profile embedded we click save
this one is still well under a thousand kilobytes and then we click ok now we need to go prep the
post for instagram okay so let me grab my phone so what i need to then do is transfer this to
my phone now if you use an iphone okay there will be other variations but i know the iphone one you
need to transfer these images super easy find the images in your folder select them so that they're
both selected right click choose share and then choose airdrop up on the screen there you'll then
have essentially a list of people make sure your phone's unlocked then you go ahead and click the
iphone version of whatever comes up in airdrop and automatically the images will be sent to
your phone perfect right so then all we need to do is go ahead whizz over to instagram and
when we're on instagram we can go ahead and add a new post and this is the point where you need
to get your portrait images correct okay so we're going to do a carousel so to post and retain your
crop you just hit the little arrows down in the bottom corner so i'll do that on an image where
you can see so it crops it square but if you want to retain your 4:5 that you've already set
then you just go ahead and press those little that little button in the bottom left if not
we're gonna do a carousel anyway so we click the front image the image that was on the feed and
then we hit the little uh arrows to make sure it's the full one then we hit the boxes over the top of
each other i mean you know what i mean and then we hit the second image which has everything in full
and so what that does is it gives us a carousel that retains the crop ratio so that you can see
everything you want to see on instagram we then click next and then that is essentially your
preview of what you're going to see so then you click next fill in the post
hashtag what you want to hashtag and then you can go ahead and share quite straightforward really
quite simple i'll include a blog post with all of those different things below and also
i'll include a set of photoshop actions for the mtogs as well which basically does all of this
in warp speed so you don't have to worry about any of it that will be linked in the blog post too
i hope this was helpful for you guys i'll see you all again next week see you on friday see you soon