Choose Carousel in the Instagram grid maker, drop in a wide photo or design, and download equal 1080 × 1350 or 1080 × 1440 slides, numbered left to right.
Split a panorama into slidesHow a seamless carousel works
A seamless carousel is one long image cut into equal slides. When someone swipes, the slides slide in edge to edge, so the picture seems to continue across the screen. There is no special Instagram feature for it; the effect comes entirely from how the image is cut.
Three things make it work:
- Every slide is exactly the same size. Instagram shows all slides at the shape of the first one. A slide of a different shape gets cropped, and the join stops lining up.
- The cuts are exact. Slide 2 has to start at the pixel where slide 1 ends. Cutting by hand in a phone editor almost always leaves a step at the join.
- The slides go up in order. Left to right, slide 1 first.
Canvas size for each slide count
Design or crop the long image to this size first. Use 1080 × 1350 (4:5) slides unless you want the extra height of 3:4.
Canvas width = number of slides × 1080 px. Height = 1350 px (4:5) or 1440 px (3:4).
| Slides | 4:5 canvas | 3:4 canvas | Canvas shape (4:5) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 2160 × 1350 | 2160 × 1440 | 1.6 : 1 |
| 3 | 3240 × 1350 | 3240 × 1440 | 2.4 : 1 |
| 4 | 4320 × 1350 | 4320 × 1440 | 3.2 : 1 |
| 5 | 5400 × 1350 | 5400 × 1440 | 4 : 1 |
| 6 | 6480 × 1350 | 6480 × 1440 | 4.8 : 1 |
| 10 | 10800 × 1350 | 10800 × 1440 | 8 : 1 |
A carousel can hold up to 20 slides, but long seamless carousels lose people halfway. Three to six slides is a common range for one continuous picture.
Worked example: a phone panorama
Say your panorama is 9000 × 2000 px, a shape of 4.5 : 1. The number of 4:5 slides that fit best is that shape divided by 0.8 (the shape of one slide): 4.5 ÷ 0.8 ≈ 5.6. Neither 5 nor 6 fits exactly, so something is trimmed:
| Slides | Area used | What's trimmed | Pixels per slide |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 (4 : 1) | 8000 × 2000 | 1000 px off the sides | 1600 wide, scaled to 1080 |
| 6 (4.8 : 1) | 9000 × 1875 | 125 px in total off the top and bottom | 1500 wide, scaled to 1080 |
Six slides keeps the full width and loses only a thin strip of sky or ground, so here 6 is the better choice. Both give each slide more than 1080 px of real detail, so both will be sharp. The carousel splitter suggests a slide count from the shape of your photo, and you can drag the box to choose which part is kept.
If your panorama is short, say 6000 × 900 px, each 4:5 slide is cut from only 720 × 900 px and enlarged by half to reach 1080 × 1350. It will look soft on a phone. A different slide count doesn't help, because the height is the limit; use a taller panorama or accept a softer result.
Designing across the joins
- Put something across each join. A road, a line of text or a person stepping from one slide into the next is what makes people swipe. If every slide could stand alone, the effect is lost.
- Keep faces and small words off the cut. Each slide is seen alone for a moment, and a face split down the middle looks odd. Large shapes and lines cross a join well.
- Make slide 1 work on its own. It is the only slide in the feed until someone swipes, and the only one on your profile, where it is shown at 3:4. With 4:5 slides the grid trims about 3% from each side of it.
- Leave the bottom edge quiet. The dots that show how many slides there are sit just below the image, and on some screens the like and comment buttons come close. Text right at the bottom is hard to read.
- End on purpose. The last slide is where people stop. A clear end, such as the subject or a short message, works better than the picture simply running out.
Uploading without breaking it
- Cut the slides. Use the carousel splitter, or any editor that can export exact 1080-wide slices of the canvas.
- Save them to your phone in order. The files are named slide-01 to slide-06, so they sort correctly.
- Start a new post and choose multiple photos. Tap the slides in order, 1 first. Instagram numbers each one as you pick it.
- Check the shape of the preview. If the first slide shows as a square, use the resize button on the preview so it keeps its tall shape. All the other slides follow it.
- Skip filters, or use the same one on every slide. A different filter on one slide shows a colour jump at the join.
After posting, swipe through once on your phone. If a join shows a step, a slide was cropped during upload; delete the post and upload again with the original shape kept.
Common mistakes
- Slides of different sizes. Even a few pixels of difference make Instagram crop one of them. Cut all slides from one canvas.
- Picking photos out of order. Phone galleries sometimes sort by date saved, not by name. Check the numbers Instagram shows before you tap Next.
- Mixing in a video. A video in the middle is fine for a photo dump, but its shape must match or the seam breaks.
- Using a screenshot of the design. Export the design itself at full size; a screenshot keeps only your screen's pixels.
For a split picture that sits on your profile rather than in one post, see the grid sizes in the grid maker; it numbers the pieces in the reverse order a profile grid needs. To make one slide-sized image from a photo, crop image has a 4:5 preset.
Sources
- TechRadar: Instagram now lets you post up to 20 photos or videos in a gallery. Carousel limit raised from 10 to 20 in August 2024
- Instagram Help Center: Image resolution of photos you share on Instagram. Photos stored at up to 1080 px wide
- Kapwing: Instagram’s new grid layout, size and dimensions. Profile grid shows a 3:4 centre crop of each post