How do you split one wide image into Instagram carousel slides?

Sizes for two to five slides

Instagram applies one orientation, square, portrait or landscape, to every photo and video in a carousel, and the app takes up to 20 of them (Instagram Help). So every strip must be the same shape. The picture is as wide as the strips side by side:

Each slide is 1080 pixels wide: Instagram uploads a photo at the best resolution it can, up to a width of 1080 pixels, and keeps its shape as it is when that lies between 1.91:1 and 3:4 (Image resolution of photos). That range is also why 3:4 is the tallest strip worth cutting. A larger picture in the same shape works as well, and is cut down.

A worked example, with invented values: a picture of 6000 × 2000 pixels for 3 slides at 4:5. The strip must be 3240 × 1350 in shape, so it uses 4800 pixels of the width and all of the height, and 1200 pixels at the sides are left out. Each slide is cut from 1600 × 2000 pixels and saved at 1080 × 1350.

The steps in the Instagram app

From Instagram’s Help Center, read on 11 October 2026:

1. Tap Create, then Post, then Select multiple.
2. Select up to 20 photos and videos from your library. Tap one to adjust how it is cropped.
3. Tap Next. A filter applies to every slide; tapping one slide edits it alone.
4. To change the order, tap and hold a slide and drag it. Choose Single caption or Multiple captions.
5. Add a location, tag people and tap Share.

Pick the slides in their numbered order and check the order on the next screen, where you can drag a slide to another place. After sharing you can reorder or remove slides and edit the caption, but you cannot add a photo or a video: you would have to delete the post and share it again.

Why the edges stop lining up

Every slide is shown on its own and people swipe between them, so the join is only seen mid-swipe, and it holds only if each slide keeps the shape it was cut in. When the app crops a slide again, to the orientation chosen for the post, the edges move and the picture jumps at the seam. Two habits prevent it: cut every strip at the shape you will keep, and choose them in the order they are numbered, with the same crop for all.

The first slide has two jobs. The feed and your profile both show the first photo or video of a carousel, with the rest a swipe away (Instagram Help). The profile draws it in a 3:4 tile cut from its middle; we measured 3:4 tiles on Instagram’s own profile on 11 October 2026, on the web. A 4:5 first slide loses 34 px (3.1%) on each side there and a 1:1 one 135 px (12.5%). Put nothing important at the left or right edge of slide one.

Designing across the cuts

• Keep faces and words off the cuts. What crosses a seam is split between two slides, and a person rarely sees both halves at once.
• Lead the eye to the right. A line, a gaze or an arrow running off the right edge invites the swipe.
• Let slide one stand alone. It is the one seen before anyone swipes.
• End the picture on the last slide. Or put the one sentence you want remembered there.

What the free splitter does

The carousel splitter cuts a picture into 2 to 20 slides at 4:5, 3:4 or 1:1, lets you slide the crop when the picture is larger than the strip, shows the swipe, and saves the slides as numbered JPG files in a ZIP. It runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded. It warns when a slide would be enlarged, and when you choose more than 10, which the API takes at most.

It works on pictures only. It does not design anything, add text, make a video carousel or post to Instagram, and it cannot see how Instagram will crop a slide you then pick in the app. If you want slides designed from a brief rather than cut from one picture, the carousel maker makes them one idea per slide.

Scheduling a carousel with Mellow Hub

Instagram’s API, which scheduling tools use, takes up to 10 items in a carousel and photos only within 4:5 to 1.91:1 (Meta for Developers, IG User media, read 11 October 2026). Mellow Hub publishes to a professional Instagram account through it, so cut at 4:5, not 3:4, and keep to 10 slides or fewer. Hub does not measure a picture’s shape before sending; the network judges it.

The first 3 posts are free, however many networks each one goes to, and need no card. After that Hub is paid: plans start at $19 a month (Solo), after a 7-day trial with a card on file that costs nothing if you cancel before it ends, and a monthly plan's first month is 20% off. Publishing is unlimited on every plan, under a fair-use ceiling that stops automated floods (900 publications a month on Solo), where one publication is one post on one account, so a post sent to five networks counts as five toward it. There are no automatic overage charges.