Split one wide photo into carousel slides

The tool takes the biggest area of your photo that has the right shape for your slide count: the slides side by side, each 4:5 or 1:1. It then divides that area into equal strips. The strips share their edges exactly, so nothing is lost and nothing is repeated at a join. Put the slides back in a row and you have the original again.

Every slide is saved at 1080 pixels wide. Instagram’s Help Center says it keeps photos at up to 1,080 pixels wide, so a bigger file would only be scaled down again. For a sharp result your photo needs about 1,080 pixels across for each slide, which is 3,240 pixels for three. The tool warns you when a slide will be enlarged and look soft.

Tip: A 16:9 photo has a 1.78:1 shape, so at 4:5 it suits two slides and uses almost all of it. For three or more slides from a normal photo, zoom in and drag the outline: the tool crops the top and bottom for you.

Guides widely report that a carousel takes its shape from the first slide, and that later slides in another shape are cropped to match. We could not find that rule on a Meta page, so treat it as reported rather than confirmed. It costs nothing to avoid: every slide this tool makes has the same shape.

The tool stops at 10 slides because that is the most Meta’s publishing API accepts. Its IG User Media reference says a carousel can have “up to 10 total images, videos, or a mix of the two”. Scheduling tools use that API. We have seen it reported that the Instagram app itself now allows up to 20 slides, but we did not find a Meta page that says so.

The same reference lists what the API takes for an image: JPEG, 8 MB at most, 320 to 1,440 pixels wide, sRGB, and a shape between 4:5 and 1.91:1. That is why the tool offers 4:5 and 1:1 for slides: both are inside that range. It also tells you if a slide you made is over 8 MB. Instagram publishes no file-size limit for posting from the app that we could find.

• Only slide 1 shows on your profile grid. Sprout Social and Hootsuite both measure the grid tile at 3:4, which shows the middle 1012 × 1350 of a 4:5 slide, and the small tile in the tool shows exactly that.
• Make slide 1 a cover. It is the one people see before they swipe, so don’t start with half a subject.
• To keep a long panorama in order in the app, tap the photos one after another in the picker. The numbers it shows become the slide order.

A panorama carousel works because the eye follows something across the cut. The splitter can’t choose that for you, but it can show you where the cuts fall before you save anything.

• Keep faces, hands and words off the white lines. A face split by a cut is never whole on screen, because its two halves are never visible together.
• Let long shapes cross the cuts on purpose: a horizon, a table, a road, a line of people. Something that runs off the right edge is a reason to swipe.
• Plan the first and last slides to look good alone. The first is your grid tile and the last is where people stop.
• Move the outline until the cuts fall in quiet parts of the picture. It takes a few seconds in the preview.

Slides are saved as JPEG by default, which is the safest file for Instagram and the only type Meta’s API takes. Choose PNG only for graphics with sharp lettering that you will post from the app yourself.