Crop photos, choose video covers and add alt text

Fit a photo to the shape you want, pick the frame a video opens on, and describe images for people using screen readers.

4 min readUpdated 16 Oct 2026All plans

The video has no sound. A caption on screen describes each step.

Before you start

Create and schedule your first post

Steps

In a new post, pick the platforms and click Continue. On the Media step, upload files or click From Library. Here a landscape photo and a short video go into one Instagram carousel.
Click a photo, or its pencil button, to open Edit image.
On the Pro and Max plans, alt text is written for each photo as you add it. Read it in Alt text and change anything that's off; on other plans, type your own. The note under the field says which platforms receive it.
Click Crop and choose a shape: Square 1:1, Portrait 4:5, Story 9:16, Wide 16:9 or Link 1.91:1, or keep Original. Drag the photo to frame it, and use the zoom slider under the shapes to get closer.
Click Apply crop. The post uses the cropped copy with your alt text, and the original in your Library stays as it was. Without a crop, Save keeps the alt text.
A video for Instagram, Facebook or TikTok gets a Cover card, and a full-length YouTube video gets one for its thumbnail. YouTube picks its own for a Short. Click Choose cover.
Drag the slider or use the skip buttons to find the frame you want, then click Use this frame. Upload photo uses an image of your own instead, except on TikTok, which always takes a frame.
Continue as usual. The Preview step shows the cropped photo and the cover you picked.

Which platforms use alt text

Instagram and Facebook: photos.
Threads and X: photos and videos.
LinkedIn: photos, videos and documents.
TikTok and YouTube don't take alt text.

Alt text can be up to 1,000 characters. On the Pro and Max plans, Write with AI drafts it for a photo.

Crops

A crop makes a new copy of the photo for this post, so the file in your Library doesn't change. GIFs can't be cropped.

Covers

Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube use a cover. TikTok always takes a frame from the video, and YouTube picks its own thumbnail for Shorts. An uploaded cover can be a JPEG, PNG or WebP.

Different media per platform

Customize on a platform's card under Per-platform media gives that platform its own files, each with its own crop and cover.

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