AEC Photography: Size It Right the First Time

A strong project photo earns its place in a proposal, a portfolio, or a website project page, but only if it’s sized correctly. When it isn’t, the same image that wowed the photographer’s clients will pixelate in a brochure, slow a webpage to a crawl, or crash a PDF on the client’s end. The work was good. The sizing was not.

The fix is simpler than it sounds. It comes down to knowing what format and resolution each medium requires and building a consistent process so every photo arrives ready to use.

MARKETLINK’s Jane Healy, Client Manager and Proposal Specialist; Lisa Perkes, Graphic Designer; and Elise McGregor, Digital Marketing Specialist break down the essentials of resizing photography for AEC firms: what to do, how to do it, and why it matters.

What role does photography resizing play in marketing?

“Resizing is not optional,” says Lisa Perkes. “Too large and you are slowing down load times and bloating file sizes. Too small and you are stretching pixels and losing quality.”

Photography appears across nearly every AEC marketing touchpoint: proposals, portfolios, brochures, websites, project pages, social media, graphic design, and publications. Each context has its own requirements. Getting the size wrong in any of them costs more than just aesthetics.

Slow load times frustrate visitors, and many will leave before a page finishes loading. They also hurt your Google ranking. Page speed is a direct factor in search performance, so oversized files don’t just create a bad experience; they undermine your visibility. “That reflects badly on the firm,” Elise McGregor adds about poor image quality. “It suggests a lack of attention to detail.”

Good photography is a significant investment. Resizing is what protects it.

Format, Resolution, and Size: The Three Variables That Matter

Resizing is not just making an image smaller. It means choosing the right file format, the right resolution, and the right dimensions for each specific use. Here is how that plays out across three common scenarios.

Resizing Photography for Proposals

“This is the optimal formatting for screens and general visual appeal, but also the best size for printing if needed.”—Jane Healy

Final File Format: JPEG (.jpg) at 70–80% quality

Final Resolution: 150–200 dpi, sized at 8–11” wide or high

Jane processes incoming photography with a Photoshop batch automation that resizes an entire folder at once and saves the results to a new location. If your team does not use Photoshop, the principle still applies: find a batch tool that handles volume efficiently. Doing it one image at a time is not sustainable.

Organization is the other half of the equation. Jane keeps all project photography in a dedicated project folder with a consistent subfolder structure:

• Final photography
• Renderings
• Resized for proposals
• Resized for web (file names written with search keywords in mind)
• Social media images

That web folder is worth a closer look: when images are saved for the web, the file name itself is an SEO signal. A name like “engineer-inspects-bridge-construction.jpg” tells search engines what the image shows. A name like “IMG_4872.jpg” tells them nothing. Naming files with relevant keywords at the time of resizing takes seconds and pays dividends in search visibility.

For photographers delivering project images, include the project name or event in the file name from the start. It saves everyone time when searching later and keeps the folder system from becoming a guessing game.

When everyone on the team knows where to save and where to look, the process stops relying on institutional memory.

Resizing Photography for Graphics

“Resolution determines how sharp something looks at its final size. A photo that looks crisp on your phone can print blurry on a flyer if the resolution is too low. Matching resolution to output is the difference between professional and amateur results.”—Lisa Perkes

Final File Format:

Print: PDF or TIFF

Digital/web: JPG for photos, PNG for transparency, WebP for web optimization

Logos and vector elements: SVG

Final Resolution:

Print: 300 DPI minimum

Digital/web: 72–96 PPI standard; export at 2x (144 PPI) for retina screens

When sending photography to a graphic designer, start with the original file straight from the camera or phone. No pre-cropping, no filters, no screenshots. Images pulled from a website, social media, or a text thread are often already compressed. “Bigger is always better,” says Lisa. “When in doubt, send the largest version you have.” Upload to Dropbox or Google Drive rather than texting, since direct messages often strip file quality in transit. Once files are exported for their final destination, compression tools like TinyPNG or Squoosh can reduce file size significantly without visible quality loss—a useful step before uploading to a website or client deliverable.

Send options, not just one image. “Giving a few strong options means we can pick what works best for the layout rather than being locked into one shot,” Lisa explains.

Orientation is worth planning before the photoshoot. Websites typically use horizontal and square images; social media often favors vertical. Share a shot list with the photographer that includes orientation requirements. “Coming to a shoot with a shot list that includes orientation is one of the simplest things you can do to protect your investment,” Lisa says.

On the design side, Lisa organizes by campaign or project, keeping original high-res files separate from exported or resized versions, and maintains a standing reference of standard sizes for recurring deliverables, including social posts, email headers, and print flyers, so she is not re-researching specs each time a project comes in.

Resizing for Social Media

“It’s important to check what you receive. There’s always a possibility that a graphic’s been saved wrong, or one photo is far smaller than the rest. What goes up has to look uniform.”—Elise McGregor

Final File Format: PNG in most cases. LinkedIn carousels require a single PDF file.

Final Size: Platform specs vary by post type. Feed posts, stories, banners, and carousels each have different requirements, and those requirements change. Confirm the correct dimensions for the specific platform and format before production, then communicate those specs to your designer or resize yourself.

Platform file size limits are worth knowing alongside dimensions. An image sized correctly by pixel dimensions can still fail to upload if the file is too large. Most platforms cap image files somewhere between 8MB and 30MB depending on post type, but those limits change. Check the platform’s current documentation before production, especially for carousels and story formats.

Check files before they are scheduled, not the morning they are supposed to go out. “It’s tedious to have to take something down and repost it,” says Elise. Verifying format, quality, and dimensions well in advance leaves room to fix problems without pressure.

Clear communication and early starts make the biggest difference. “Whether it’s a photoshoot or graphic design, start the process early, instruct clearly, get the right people what they need in the formats they need, and any issues will be a lot easier to resolve,” Elise says.

Naming conventions matter here too. Include the date, topic, platform, and size in each social media graphic file name. An example would be “june-resizing-ig-story.” Organized folders and consistent naming mean less time hunting and more time posting.

Build the System Once, Benefit Every Time

The thread running through every recommendation here is the same: communication and organization. Set standards for photographers, coordinators, and designers. Write them down. Train everyone who touches the process. When the right format, resolution, and folder structure become habit, photography stops being a bottleneck and starts doing what it was always meant to do: representing the firm’s work at its best.