In this video, I'm going to explain our social media cheat sheet and how you can use it. But we are going to use it in the later video In this course, where I'm going to adapt a graphic that we are going to make through these different social media sizes. But in this video, I just wanted to explain what it is how you can use it. And just so you can understand the different types of social media graphics sizes, for different platforms. You can download these social media treated for free. It's in your course files.

And let's get started. So right here we have some major social media networks. So we have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google Plus, which is still in here in this file. But as of late, Google decided to kill Google Plus, but we are still going to leave it here because we really don't know what's going to happen with it. We also have YouTube, Tumblr, and VK for our Ukrainian and Russian users. So let's dive in a bit deeper, and I will explain what each of them are.

So basically, these are most popular social media graphics that you're going to find on these platforms. We took all of these sizes from the official websites. So if your preferred social media platform is not on this list, and in this social media cheat sheet, simply go to the platform's website, go to the FAQ, or about or whatever section that they have on the website and find the sizes that you need for that particular platform. You can also Google it, but in most cases, these platforms are what's used for a majority of the people. So we simply create a social media cheat sheet for these particular platforms. So as I said, these are the different sizes used by these different websites.

So we have, for example, Instagram profile, image, post and Instagram story. And if you're wondering about Instagram TV, it's the same size as the Instagram story. So what they are is smart object with base, which basically means that you can edit these smart objects multiple times, and you can save directly from within the Smart Object. So for example, if I click on Facebook, you can see right here on your right in the Layers panel, there are folders for all of them. So if I click on this little arrow and open up the Facebook, for example, we have four different Smart Objects for four different sizes for Facebook. So for example, if we want to open Facebook post, which is basically what you're going to see in your feed, and this is the size, you're going to create it If you're creating Facebook campaigns for the feet, so double click on this icon right here to open it up.

And everything you create or paste or adapt right here and save is going to go back right here. And you can go in multiple times, double click open and up like this, save it and edit right here, and it will go back to this social media cheat sheet. But if you want to directly save it to your desktop or to your folder, from here, simply go to the File, Save As, choose your output destination and your desire file format. We usually prefer JPEG or PNG. And that's those are the file formats that most of these social media networks and websites are preferring as well. You can also create a GIF file inside of the Photoshop but that's Another time and for another course.

Right now let's go back to the social media cheat sheet and as I said, when you save it from here, it will jump straight back to here. So let me quickly open up just a simple image and I am going to show you how it works from here. So when I find my image, I can simply drag and drop it right here inside of this Smart Object. It's going to place that image inside, you can click this check mark or press Enter or Return. us the Moto which is a tool right here click on one of the corners, hold Shift Alt and left click in one of the corners to increase the size of the image in all directions. Hold SHIFT and click with your left mouse click to position it however you want.

Press this checkmark or enter or return and it's now placed inside of this Smart Object. But as I go back right here, you cannot see it right here. That's because we still haven't saved it. So if you want to save it directly to your desktop or to prefer folder, simply go to the File, Save as choose whichever folder you want and whatever file format you want. So as I said a JPG or PNG or whatever, and save it there, you can also give it a name and so on. Or you can simply click Ctrl or Command S, and it will save right back to here.

So I can close it. I can go back another day. And I can double click right here to open up and edit or make changes. So for example, I want to delete it Ctrl S, go back right here, and it's saved as it was back to the Facebook post. Now, when you edit this main file, this social media cheat sheet you might want to save So imagine you adapted all of these sizes for all of these different social media networks. And you want to save social media cheat sheet back and use it another time, simply hit Ctrl S. So close all of these up Ctrl S or Command S on your keyboard, you can see it's saving right here, and it's saved and you can use it another time to pick up where you left off with your designs.

So it's really simple to use really easy you will see in the next video when we are going to start creating social media graphic and adapted to the different sizes in this social media cheat sheet. One last thing I want to mention is format. So you might be wondering, Why do I have to create different sizes for my posts? Why can I just create it for example square, and it can all show in different platforms and look exactly the same? Well, in some cases, it will It will look the same on different platforms, but in most cases it won't. Why is that because these companies spent years developing their platforms.

And they are creating something which is called user experience, which is basically, when you're using, for example, let's see Facebook, on desktop, on tablet on mobile, whether it is Android or iOS, it basically looks almost the same. So that's why they have all of these different social media sizes. So their experience across different platforms in different device types is basically the same. So whether you are using Facebook, on mobile or on desktop, it looks almost identical. So that's why they have all of these different social media sizes, so that they keep a look of the platform consistent across the different devices. And multiple operating system types.

So that's why, for example, if you're using Instagram post, just to post on your feed, and you are creating a rectangle like it's this Facebook post, it will cut to this square format, which it is Instagram post, then when users click on their Instagram post, it will still open as the rectangle, but it's meant to be a square image. Same thing with the story if you're using this square image and place it right here in the middle, but don't extend it to the top and bottom sides. It will still cut and leave you with the empty space on your Instagram story. So, for example, let's imagine this user is scrolling through your Instagram feed and they see this image but what if the main point of your image is on the right or on the left because you're Using this rectangle file format, and it's meant for the square, there are simply going to miss that message that you're trying to convey with that image because you didn't adapt it to what Instagram wants you to do.

So also, one main thing about this is scrolling, you just want to keep your users engaged for longer. So for example, if you're creating let's stick to the Instagram case, if you're creating this rectangle, size, and there referring you to create a square size, users will scroll through this rectangle one faster then they are going to use do with this square one, because the rectangle one is cut right here and the square one is longer because it's optimized Foursquare posts on your feet. That's why I'm saying that all of these different social media sizes exists for all of these different platforms, because every platform is different. And they're creating this in order to preserve the usability and the user experience across different platforms and device types. That's why we have social media cheat sheet to help you adapt to different social media sizes and to different platforms.