Posting your art on Instagram is one of the fastest ways to gain exposure for your work. But how to make digital art look good on Instagram? In this guide, you’ll learn how to upload digital art to Instagram to showcase it in the best way possible, what mistakes to avoid, and how to post from your computer!
Where can I upload digital art?
Apart from creating your own website to upload your artworks, there are many Internet platforms out there that allow you to post digital art. This includes specific art websites, such as DeviantArt, Behance, or ArtStation, but as well social media networks like Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Instagram.
→ Best Sites to Upload Art [Ultimate Artist Guide To Posting Art Online]
All these platforms have a specific type of audience and a particular way of presenting your art. All let you interact with fellow artists and art lovers.
Is Instagram good for posting art?
Instagram is currently the social media network with the highest engagement rate. Using the right posting strategy along with relevant hashtags will help you get your art out to a large audience instantaneously.
IG is highly popular among artists, art magazines, and galleries who love using it because of its picture-based nature. As such, it’s also the biggest art marketplace for creatives from all over the world, who showcase and sell their artworks via their IG accounts.
Most importantly, you should never solely rely on Instagram to promote your art.
The 'Social Art Dilemma' is a good example how Instagram can make promoting your art impossible... What's the solution? Well, artists do need a website cuz social media can kill your art career!
How can I post my art on Instagram?
Posting art on Instagram is simple and totally free. If you created your digital artwork on a tablet or smartphone, you can upload it directly from there. The Instagram app works with all mobile devices. You can download it from the App Store or Google Play for free and install it on your iPhone, iPad or Android device.
With the app running, all you need to do is create an Instagram account and then hit the little plus icon at the bottom of the app to upload your digital art to Instagram!
How do I post art on Instagram from my computer?
Posting art on Instagram from your computer requires a few more steps, because the original IG app doesn’t run on a PC or Mac. Of course, there’s third-party software you can use, but the easiest way is to transfer your artworks over to your phone or tablet.
There are several ways to do that.
First, you can upload your art to a cloud service, such as Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud (if you’re using a Mac). That way, you don’t only have a backup copy of your images stored outside of your computer, but you can also download it to your phone from there and then post it on Instagram.
The second method is using your email account. You can attach your artworks to an email from your computer, and then send the email to yourself or simply save it as a draft. Log into your email account on your tablet or smartphone and download the images to post them on Instagram from there.
The third way is to connect your phone or tablet to your computer with a USB cable. You can then copy the image files from your computer to your mobile device.
How to upload digital art to Instagram:
How to make digital art look good on Instagram?
When uploading your digital art to Instagram, you want it to look as good as on your computer. Of course, you don’t want your art to look blurry or pixelated, and you want to post digital art on Instagram without losing quality.
However, in reality things look a bit different. Unfortunately, you cannot upload lossless PNG files to Instagram. Your pictures need to be JPEG, which means they’ll always lose some quality, because JPEG is a lossy format.
DOs #1: Save high-resolution images of your digital art for Instagram
Make sure to use a high resolution when saving your digital art as JPEG images. Then the quality loss shouldn’t be too bad.
In most graphics programs, you can save images by going to File > Save As.
If you’re using Photoshop, you can save a web-optimized JPEG file by using File > Save for Web. This will automatically convert your image to RGB, which is optimal for web usage!
DOs #2: Use the right canvas size to save your digital art for Instagram
The largest canvas size supported by Instagram is 1080 by 1080 pixels. Anything that goes beyond this limit will be compressed.
If your artwork’s dimensions are greater than 1080 pixels on the longest side, make sure to resize it before saving. In Photoshop, you can do this by going to Image > Image Size, or by entering the appropriate dimensions in the Save for Web dialog window.
With that in mind, if you upload a 1350 × 1080 px canvas, for example, it would be compressed to 1080 × 864 pixels. Conversely, if you upload digital art that is only 400 by 400 pixels, Instagram will automatically enlarge it to fit its supported canvas size.
Both scenarios are not beneficial to your image quality, and automatic resizing can be the reason why your art is blurry on Instagram.
For the best results, make sure to save your images not larger than 1080 px on the longest side. If you upload a 16:9 wide resolution image of 1080 by 607 pixels, for instance, Instagram will keep it in its original resolution – as long as its ratio stays between 1.91:1 and 4:5.
Back in the day, it was only possible to upload square pictures in a 1:1 ratio. Now, Instagrammers can also publish portrait (4:5) and landscape (3:2) images. Find out more about Instagram’s latest resolution limits here.
DOs #3: Choose an appropriate DPI to upload digital art to Instagram
DPI stands for dots per inch. It describes how many dots are within one inch of your image canvas and is an indicator for image quality. The more dots, the better the quality.
Instagram recommends using a DPI of 300. However, using 300 dpi or 72 dpi doesn’t make too much of a difference when it comes to displaying pictures on the web. It’s something that’s more important in print.
So if your images meet the minimum requirement of 72 dpi, you should be fine!
DOs #4: Add some variety to spice up your Instagram feed
Posting only images of your digital art on Instagram is not a good idea. People like to get to know the person they’re following.
Give your followers some insights into your life or behind the scenes of your work. Show them some snippets of you working on the piece, work in progress shots, what inspired you to a particular artwork, or just some bits of your daily life.
Don’t forget to add a little personal blurb below your posts; people love to hear your story.
DOs #5: Post detail cutouts and multiple pictures
Headshots and detail cutouts tend to get more likes on Instagram.
As people scroll down their Instagram feed, it’s a good idea to grab their attention by posting a cutout first. Then post your complete work and more details in the next slides.
This is a great way to get more exposure and show your art from different angles.
DOs #6: Select hashtags that are relevant to your niche
Instagram is all about hashtags. They are what will eventually get your digital art out there to be seen.
When adding hashtags, it’s important to select those that are most relevant to your niche and allow your artwork to stay up there for the longest time possible.
Click here for more tips on how to create a successful art Instagram.
How to upload digital art to Instagram:
DON'Ts #1: Don't use Instagram filters
Surely, Instagram filters can give nice effects to your photos, but when publishing digital art, you should avoid them.
To give your audience a realistic idea of what your image looks like, it’s best to post it in its original state – the way you created it in your graphics program!
DON'Ts #2: Don't forget to prevent your art from getting stolen
Posts on social media have the chance to go viral. When you upload your digital art to Instagram, it has the possibility to spread out to other platforms – it may get tagged by other Instagrammers, or reposted on Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit, or blogs. Which is a good thing, because it helps you get exposure for your art.
On the flip side, people may also take advantage of your work and post it as their own. Or, they might repost it without crediting you as the artist, because they simply don’t know where the original came from!
To avoid such drawbacks, it’s a good idea to add a watermark to your digital art that includes your artist name and website (which can also be your IG account).
A watermark doesn’t have to be big and ugly. It can be small and discreet, and you can easily add it with Photoshop or any other graphics program.
Learn more about adding watermarks to your digital art to prevent it from getting stolen online.
How to optimize your digital art IG feed
Using an Instagram planner is a great way to build a marketing strategy that is optimized for your target audience.
Planoly is a visual planning tool that enables you to plan your IG posts in advance, comfortably on your desktop computer.
Planoly was the first visual planner for Instagram and now is an official Instagram partner with more than 5 million users.
The app offers you a range of features to make uploading your digital art to Instagram more easy and hassle-free. It allows you to draft and schedule your posts (incl. captions and hashtags) and stories in advance, and then automatically upload them to your IG account.
Its analyzer tool checks your follower data and content performance and monitors the engagement on your posts. That way, it’s super-easy for you to see which type of posts work well and which don’t.
Planoly’s comment manager takes care of keeping interactions with your community alive at all times.
You can try Planoly for free. Their free basic plan allows you to schedule up to 30 posts a month. To use the more advanced features, you’ll need to upgrade to the paid plan.
Use Planoly for FREE with NO TIME LIMIT
Use Planoly as long as you like with up to 30 scheduled posts per month!
Hey Instagrammers, I hope this post was helpful and you were able to take away some useful tips on how to upload your digital art to Instagram!
See you on the next post! Cheers, Angie 💗
This was super helpful! I’m curious about hashtags – do you have any insights on choosing the right ones for digital art? How much do they contribute to visibility on Instagram?
Glad that you found it helpful!
I’m not sure how much hashtags still really contribute to visibility on Instagram. I feel they used to be much more effective in the past. Unfortunately, Instagram is very intransparent about what ranks well on their platform. Plus, the algorithm is constantly changing anyways.
I just recommend typing in a couple of hashtags relevant to your art into the Instagram search and see what suggestions come up. You can simply start with something like #digitalart, #digitalartwork, #photoshop, and so on.
Also, take a look at other artists what kind of hashtags they are using!
I love the idea of sharing my art on Instagram, but I worry about copyright issues and people using my work without permission. How do you protect your art online, and have you encountered any issues with unauthorized use on the platform?
Yea, copyright is definitely a big issue. I had my art stolen as well–I don’t know whether it was from Instagram or another site–and it’s not nice. To protect your art online, I can only recommend adding a watermark to your images. I’m using an unobtrusive watermark with my artist name and my website URL. Maybe that’s something that will work for you, too!