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 — kept with the event and shown in your Media tab; great 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 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.
Picking a good cover photo
- Landscape orientation (wider than it is tall) works best.
- Keep key details — a face, a logo, important text — toward the center of the frame. Anything near the very top or bottom edge is the most likely to be cropped.
- 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.
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? Today the flyer lives in your Media tab for you to download and share yourself (social media, text, email) — it isn't displayed full-size on the public event page. The cover photo is what appears there.
What image sizes are supported? Cover photo uploads are limited to 10MB; event flyer uploads up to 20MB (posters tend to be higher-resolution). Both accept JPEG, PNG, and WebP.