Field notes
Playbooks, teardowns and the occasional argument — everything we have learned helping creators grow across every major platform.
Spotify publishes album and artist images at 640, 300 and 64 pixels. There is no original behind the 640 — every 'HD Spotify cover art' result is upscaling the same file.
Apple's public directory hands out a 600-pixel copy. The 3000×3000 the publisher submitted is at the same address with one number changed.
Upload a square image of at least 600×600. That is also the largest Twitch stores — and the page only ever publishes the 300, which is why avatars look soft when reused.
The picture rendered fine when you pasted it and is a broken icon now. The expiry was in the URL the whole time — here is how to read it.
Bluesky is the one platform that will simply tell you what is on a post. You get every image, the alt text, and the file exactly as it was uploaded.
Threads answers a signed-out request honestly, which makes it one of the easier platforms to get a picture out of. Two details are worth knowing first.
Two different links, two different routes. A post gives you what its link card publishes; a Page gives you its picture at the size Facebook stores.
Instagram publishes a larger copy of every public post's picture so link cards can render it. Here is how to reach it, and why the link stops working.
X keeps one file per photo and serves it at six named sizes. The timeline shows you a middling one; the largest is a single word away in the URL.
Every platform publishes a larger copy of a post's picture than the one the feed renders. Here is where each one keeps it, and where the trail goes cold.