Instagram carousel size

Instagram shows every slide of a carousel in the same frame, so the post doesn’t change height as people swipe. The first slide sets the shape of that frame, and any later slide with a different shape is cropped to fit it. Nothing is squashed or stretched; the edges are simply cut.

The rule works in reverse too. If the first slide is square, every 4:5 slide after it loses a fifth of its height. If the first slide is a 1.91:1 landscape, the portraits behind it keep well under half of theirs.

Tip: Got one photo in the wrong shape? Put it on a 1080 × 1350 background in your editor, with a plain border where it falls short, so Instagram has nothing left to crop.

In the Instagram app a carousel can hold up to 20 photos and videos. Scheduling tools publish through Meta’s Content Publishing API, which still caps a carousel at 10 items, whether photos, videos or a mix. A 15-slide tutorial is too long for any API-based scheduler, so post it from the app.

The API is pickier about files as well. It takes JPEG images only, at most 8 MB each, from 320 to 1,440 pixels wide, in sRGB, in shapes from 4:5 to 1.91:1. For video it lists MOV or MP4 files using H.264 or HEVC, at 23 to 60 frames per second.

Single photos can go up at 3:4 from the app, but the carousel figures in Sprout Social’s and Hootsuite’s guides stop at 4:5, and so does the API. Unless you have checked a 3:4 carousel in the app’s preview, 4:5 is the safer pick.

A panorama carousel is one wide picture cut into slides, so each swipe moves the view along. Work out the canvas from the slide count: 1,080 pixels of width per slide and 1,350 of height. Three slides make 3240 × 1350, four make 4320 × 1350, and the cuts fall every 1,080 pixels.

1. Set up the full canvas first, then add vertical guides at every 1,080 pixels.
2. Keep faces, words and products off the guides. A face split by a cut never looks whole, because its two halves are never on screen together.
3. Let lines, shapes and backgrounds run over the cuts on purpose. Something that disappears off the right edge is what makes people swipe.
4. Export each section as its own 1080 × 1350 file, named 01, 02, 03 so they stay in order.
5. Judge the first section on its own. It is the only part your profile grid shows, and the grid trims about 34 px from each side of it.

Tips, tutorials and checklists are the carousels people stop to read, so the lettering has to hold up at phone size. A post fills the width of the screen, and on a phone 390 points across, each point covers about 2.8 pixels of a 1,080-pixel slide. Multiply the size you want on screen by 2.8 to get the size to set in your design app.

Leave a margin of 60 to 80 pixels on every side. Instagram shows a small slide counter in the top-right corner while people swipe, and words pressed against an edge look cramped on a phone.

1. Use one canvas size, 1080 × 1350, for every slide, including the nearly empty ones.
2. Save photos as high-quality JPEGs in sRGB. Text-heavy slides can be PNGs if you post from the app, but a scheduler needs JPEGs.
3. Keep each image under 8 MB when a scheduler will publish it, the ceiling in Meta’s API.
4. Export video slides as MP4 with H.264 video, and trim them before uploading.
5. Select the files in the order you want; the numbers the app shows as you pick them become the slide order.

• Mixing shapes and leaving the app to crop them, which takes the sides off squares and the tops off tall shots.
• Saving the hook for slide two. The first slide is the grid thumbnail and the one people judge before deciding to swipe.
• Splitting a sentence across two slides, so a reader who stops halfway is left with half a thought.
• Sending PNG slides to a scheduler, when Meta’s API takes JPEG images only.
• Treating 20 slides as a target. It is a ceiling; a carousel should end when the point is made.