Help & SupportHelp CenterPoster & Cover Photo
Poster & Cover Photo
Your event has two separate image slots — Cover photo and Event flyer — and they're built for different shapes. Using the same tall, text-heavy poster for both is the most common way an event page ends up with a header image that crops out the date, lineup, or venue.
The two slots
| Slot | Where it's used | Best shape |
|---|---|---|
| Cover photo | The banner at the top of your event page, and the thumbnail in search results and the events feed | Wide (landscape), simple — a photo or graphic that still reads well cropped short and wide |
| Event flyer | Your promotional poster — shown in full on your event page, to guests, invitees, and artists browsing an open call; also downloadable for sharing on social media or texting to your lineup | Tall (portrait) is fine — flyers are usually full of text: date, lineup, venue, ticket info |
When you create an event from a poster, Show My Stage offers to save that same image as your flyer — check the box if you want that. It is never automatically used as your cover photo — you upload that separately.
Why a poster looks bad as a cover photo
A cover photo is displayed as a short, wide banner. If you upload a tall poster there, Show My Stage crops it to fit that wide shape — and a poster's most important content (headline text, the lineup list, your venue and date) is usually exactly what sits in the parts that get cut off. Faces and logos near the top or bottom of a poster are the most common casualties.
The fix: upload your poster as the Event flyer (its full, uncropped shape is preserved there and shown to everyone who can see your event), and pick a different, simpler image for your Cover photo — a wide photo, or a graphic with the important content centered, so it survives a crop.
What size should my images be?
| Cover photo | Event flyer | |
|---|---|---|
| Best size | 2400 × 1350 pixels (landscape) | 1080 × 1350 pixels (portrait) — or any shape |
| Also fine | Anything wider than 1600 pixels | Anything 1000 pixels or more on its shortest side |
| Print quality | Not needed — it's only shown on screen | 2550 × 3300 if you also want to print it |
| File size limit | 10 MB | 20 MB |
| File types | JPG, PNG, WebP | JPG, PNG, WebP |
| Gets cropped? | Yes — to several different shapes | No — always shown whole |
You can upload something smaller. We'll tell you if an image is likely to look soft, but we'll never stop you — a phone photo is better than no photo.
How the cover photo gets cropped
Your cover photo is reused in several places, each a different shape: the wide banner at the top of your event page, the header on your public page, the small image on event cards, and the preview that appears when someone shares your event link.
You don't have to work out those shapes yourself. Show My Stage looks at your photo and crops around whatever it finds — a face, a dancer, the main subject — rather than blindly taking the middle. In practice it gets this right.
The one thing to keep in mind: your event title and status badges are printed over the bottom-left of the banner, so keep anything important out of that corner.
After you upload, the Media tab shows you the finished banner exactly as it appears at the top of your event page — not a guess at it, the real thing. If you don't like what you see, replace it.
Picking a good cover photo
- Landscape orientation (wider than it is tall) works best. A tall portrait photo has to lose a great deal to become a wide banner.
- One clear subject beats a busy group shot — it gives the crop something obvious to keep.
- Avoid dense text. A cover photo is a visual teaser, not the place for your full lineup or ticket info — that's what your description and flyer are for.
- You can update your cover photo any time from your event's Media tab, without affecting your flyer.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use the same image for both? You can, but it's not recommended — the flyer keeps the full image, while the cover photo will crop it. If your poster works fine cropped short and wide, feel free; most don't.
The crop isn't what I wanted. What can I do? First, try a wider photo. Most disappointing crops come from a tall, portrait-shaped image being fitted into a wide banner — there simply isn't a wide version of it to find.
If you have a particular framing in mind, crop the photo yourself before uploading — on your phone's Photos app, or any image editor — to roughly the shape of a wide banner. Whatever you upload is what we work with, so a photo you've already framed the way you want will come through that way.
I already used my poster as the cover photo and it looks cropped. How do I fix it? Go to your event's Media tab and upload a new Cover photo — this doesn't remove or change your Event flyer, which keeps the original poster.
Does the flyer show up anywhere on my public event page? Yes. Your flyer appears in a Poster section on your event page, and anyone who can see the event — guests, people you've invited, and artists browsing an open call — can tap it to view it full screen or download it. It is never cropped, whatever shape you uploaded.
Your flyer follows your event's privacy exactly: on a private event, only people you've invited can see it.
Can I remove a cover photo or flyer without replacing it? Yes — the Media tab has a Remove button on each. Removing one doesn't affect the other.
What image sizes are supported? See the size table above. In short: cover photos up to 10MB, flyers up to 20MB, both in JPEG, PNG, or WebP.
I uploaded a small image and got a warning. Did it still work? Yes. The warning is advice, not an error — your image uploaded. It just means the image may look soft on large screens, and a larger one would look better if you have it.