How To Create a Seamless Instagram Carousel in Photoshop

Learn how to use Photoshop to divide an image seamlessly and easily post on Instagram as multiple images that appear as one and can be swiped back and forth. This is how to create a seamless Instagram carousel in photoshop

In this video, I’m gonna show you how you can use Photoshop to create a seamless Instagram carousel. You’re going to learn how to take a single image and split it up. So when you post it on Instagram as multiple images, it looks like a seamless image that people can swipe back and forth. And you’ll learn some new techniques and tricks including how to work with the Slice Tool, and Content-Aware Scale. In this example, I’m gonna give you five easy steps to create your seamless Instagram carousel.

Setting Carousel Canvas Size – Instagram Carousel in Photoshop

So here’s our first example, this panorama, our first step is to create a canvas. The size of this panorama is going to hold all of our slices of the picture. So we need a new document. So we come up here to File, New and up pops the new document dialogue. We’re going to make this 1080 by 1080 because we want the square or Instagram and I’m going to keep it 300 resolution RGB color, 16 bit and my background content will be White. And all you need to do is say, Create I’m gonna make this a little bit smaller.

How to Create Your Carousel Layout – Instagram Carousel in Photoshop

So now you have to decide how many images you’re going to put in your carousel. I’m gonna say, I want three. So now that we have a square document that is good for Instagram. Now we come up here to Image, Canvas Size. And so now I need to increase my canvas size and that is dependent on how many images I’m going to use. So I set up, I’m going to use three images. First, I’m gonna change my Pixels to Percent. Right now it says 100. I’m also gonna click on this anchor right here, the one on the center left, and I’ll make sure Relative is not checked. And Canvas extension color background is white.

And so I have three images. So I’m gonna multiply the new document with which is a percentage times three. So this is 300 now. I’m gonna make this Canvas Size bigger so it’s going to fit three square documents. So it’s gonna increase it by three document sizes and say, OK. And if I look at my Image Size now, it is, 3240 by 1080. So that means we have enough room for three, 1080 by 1080 pictures. And we say OK now that we’ve increased our canvas size the next step is, we need to create the carousel layout.

On our canvas, now we’re going to need guides. These guides are gonna separate our canvas into equal amounts of space, where pictures are gonna go. So I’m gonna come up here to View and say New Guide Layout in the New Guide Layout is gonna come up. And what you’re going to need to make sure is that you have Columns checked and Clear Existing Guides.

Now I know I need three columns because I’m gonna use three photos. And all they have to do is say OK, those are my guides. So now we’re gonna use something called the slice tool. Slice Tool is going to do as it says it’s going to slice this canvas up into three columns. so that we have three individual columns for our three photos. So the Slice Tool is under the same menu as the Crop Tool. So if I left-click and I’m going to see the Slice Tool. So if you don’t see the Slice Tool there, that probably means you didn’t add it there but that’s okay if you don’t see it there, you can come down here to where you see these three dots on the left-hand side of the menu bar. Click on that and up here at the top, EditToolbar. So the Slice Tool is probably over here where it says Extra Tools. So what I did is, I selected the Slice Tool and click and drag. And it’s now under the Crop Tool menu. Also, there’s something called Slice Select Tool and I click and drag or to the toolbar. So this is the Customized Toolbar window. And I’ll say Done. And I left click on the Crop Tool menu and here it is Slice Tool, select Slice Tool. So if I want I can drag the slice like so, and go to each one. But what’s easier is come up here to Slices From Guides, click that button and your slices are drawn already for you.

Now, if I come up here to the toolbar, left-click on that and where it says Slice Select Tool, click on that. I just wanna show you that you want you double click and you have slice options. You can name each slice, a different name. You have all these other options and let’s just use this name that it has. I say OK. I double click on the next slice you could see that it gave it an O2 and the next one gave it an O3. So it renamed them. Like I say, you can take those names or put in your own names. The reason those names are important is once you export your carousel, you’re gonna see that each of your images is named with a one or two or three at the end of the file name to help you when you upload in order.

How To Adjust Your Panorama Image to fit – Instagram Carousel in Photoshop

So now we need to bring in our Panorama image into our carousel and we have to fit that Panorama into our canvas size. So here is our Panorama and we’re gonna click on our move tool or V for the move tool, hold down your shift key. And by holding down the shift key it should come in the center of your carousel layout. Our image that we just brought in is way too big for our carousel layout. That’s okay. We’re going to use the transform tool to scale it down, so that we can get it into the boundaries of the canvas.

So I’m gonna hit command T and zero that way see in the handles on the transform tool. So with this maintain aspect ratio up here this little chain, make sure that it’s off. Hold down your option and your shift and what’s gonna happen here is it’s going to scale right from the middle. So, I’m holding that down and scaling down as far as it can go and leave it right there for right now and click check box at the top to commit the changes. If I double click on the hand tool, it brings it up to scale and make this a little bit smaller.

Then I wanna show you something else. First of all, there are parts of this photo that are still aren’t showing. And we can use another Photoshop tool to help us get those ends of the photo back into view. So I’m gonna come up here to Edit, Content-Aware Scale and from either side, I’m gonna bring in the handle. And there’s a lot of photo that was actually not showing. So you can bring it in from the left side and the right side.

So, now we’ve got the extreme ends of the photo in view. Photoshop took care of squashing in the pixels in the middle where it needed to and then I commit the changes. And you can, if you need to, you can still use the move tool to move this around. I like it as it is already. And double-click on the hand tool there is our Instagram carousel. Now we’re ready to export our carousel. Hey, if you’re getting value out of this so far hit that like button.

How to Adjust Your Image For Instagram – Instagram Carousel in Photoshop

Now let’s save our image out to the computer. So we’ll come up here to File, Export, Save for Web, Legacy. Here’s what our carousel looks like now you could see the three slices that we made. All we need to do is make sure that this says JPEG, and Very High everything else, we can leave the same. And we could say Save.

In our computer, we just choose where we wanna save it down here at the bottom or says Slices. Make sure it says All Slices, click Save. And now on our file system, we have a folder called Images. And this is what I was saying earlier is, it is saved three images, and it’s got the file name with 01, 02, 03. And if I click on this, you could see that the file is 1080 by 1080. All of them are Instagram sized.

How to Upload Your Carousel Images to Instagram – Instagram Carousel in Photoshop

And now, I am going to Airdrop these to my phone. And here they are on my phone. And now, I could upload them to Instagram. So now I’m in my Instagram account and I click on their multiple image icon, you know wanna make sure that I got them in order.

So that is one, that is two, and that is three and then click next. And this is my carousel, how it’s gonna look on Instagram. I say next, I can put all my information and share it. I’m not gonna share it right now but that’s how it would look. If you wanna know more about Photoshop click on this, playlist here. If you haven’t already, subscribe, like and share this video. And remember, it’s never too late to learn. Thanks for watching. See you in the next video.

See my photography website here 👉 https://www.charlescabreraphotography.com

See the previous blog article here 👉 https://charlescabrera.com/create-a-powerful-text-portrait-in-photoshop/