Instagram Story sizes — and how to extend a photo to 9:16 without cropping

Stories are 1080 × 1920 pixels, an aspect ratio of 9:16. Photos shot in landscape or square leave empty bars, and cropping loses the subject.

Generative fill solves this by inventing realistic background above and below your photo. The Story format recipe does it in one step and exports at exactly 1080 × 1920.

Mind the safe zones. Keep important text and faces away from roughly the top 250 px and bottom 340 px, where the app overlays its own interface.

For consistent branding, extend a whole set of photos in batch and review each result: the AI-generated areas work best on skies, walls and natural backdrops, and less well on highly structured scenes like crowds.