How to Make an Open Graph Image (Perfect Social Preview for Every Platform)

Open Graph is a small set of meta tags that Facebook introduced in 2010 so any web page could describe how it should look when shared. Almost every platform now reads them: Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, iMessage, Slack, Discord, and Pinterest all use the same og: tags, and X (Twitter) reads its own twitter: tags but falls back to Open Graph when they are missing.

The image is set by one tag — og:image — that points at a full, absolute URL. When someone shares your link, the platform fetches your page, reads that tag, downloads the image, and renders the preview card. No tag, no card: most platforms then show a bare link or grab a random image from the page, which rarely looks good.

The safe, universal size is 1200 × 630 pixels — an aspect ratio of roughly 1.91:1. It is large enough to look sharp on high-resolution screens and matches what Facebook and LinkedIn render at full width. X's large summary card uses 1200 × 628, close enough that a single 1200 × 630 image works everywhere.

Do not go much smaller. Facebook needs at least 200 × 200 to show anything, and below about 600 × 315 it shrinks your link to a tiny thumbnail instead of a full-width card. When in doubt, make it bigger: one 1200 × 630 image reused across every platform is simpler than juggling per-network sizes.

Designing the image is only half the job. These tags go in the head of your page so platforms know what to display. At minimum you want the image, a title, a description, and the page URL:

Different platforms crop the card differently, and some overlay their own UI on top of it. Keep anything important — your headline, logo, key numbers — within the central area, with roughly a 10 percent margin on every side.

Watch the corners especially. LinkedIn and some feeds round the corners, X can letterbox slightly, and play buttons or profile avatars sometimes sit over the bottom edge. Text that runs right to the edge is the first thing to get clipped.

The most common frustration is changing the image and seeing the old one keep appearing. That is caching: platforms store your preview for days so they don't re-fetch on every share, and they will not pick up a new image on their own quickly.

You don't need Photoshop or Canva. Because an OG image is just a 1200 × 630 rectangle of text and colour, you can build it in HTML and export it as an image. Write a simple styled box at exactly 1200 × 630 — a background, your headline, maybe a logo — then render it to PNG.

The free HTML to Image tool on this site does exactly that: paste your HTML, choose the OG Image (1200 × 630) preset, set Scale to 2x for a crisp result, and download. Everything happens in your browser, so there's no signup and nothing is uploaded. Duplicate the template, swap the headline, and you have a matching image for every post.