How to make a seamless carousel
- Drop in one wide photo, such as a panorama, a landscape, or a long design you've laid out elsewhere.
- Set the number of slides (2–20) and the slide shape. 4:5 is the safe default for Instagram.
- Check the warning line. The panel shows the ideal source size. If your photo has to be enlarged more than about 15% to cover every slide, it tells you, so you can use fewer slides before anything goes soft.
- Optional: add per-slide captions at the top or bottom, and turn on the safe-zone guide to keep text away from where the app draws its own buttons.
- Download the ZIP. Files are named
carousel-01-of-05.jpg,carousel-02-of-05.jpg, and so on. Select them in that order when you post.
Slide sizes this tool exports
| Shape | Pixels per slide | Where it fits |
|---|---|---|
| 4:5 | 1080 × 1350 | Instagram feed — the tallest portrait the feed shows, so it takes up the most screen |
| 3:4 | 1080 × 1440 | Matches the 3:4 profile grid exactly, so the cover isn't trimmed there |
| 1:1 | 1080 × 1080 | Square feeds, LinkedIn, Facebook, older Instagram layouts |
| 9:16 | 1080 × 1920 | Stories and full-screen formats |
| 16:9 | 1920 × 1080 | Slides, YouTube community posts, wide banners |
Instagram uses the first slide's shape for the whole carousel, so every slide in a set should be the same shape. This tool guarantees that.
How many slides should a panorama be?
Divide your photo's width by its height, then divide that by the slide shape's ratio (0.8 for 4:5, 0.75 for 3:4, 1 for square), and round. That's the number of slides that fits with the least cropping.
| Photo shape | 4:5 slides | 1:1 slides |
|---|---|---|
| 2:1 (e.g. 6000 × 3000) | 2–3 | 2 |
| 3:1 | 4 | 3 |
| 4:1 | 5 | 4 |
| 6:1 | 7–8 | 6 |
The tool center-crops whatever doesn't fit. Going one slide over or under the ideal count usually trims less than 10%.