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Instagram carousels are one of the highest-performing content formats on the platform. They get more saves, more swipes, and more reach than single images. But most creators are exporting them wrong, and it shows.
Here is what actually happens when you swipe through a poorly exported carousel, and how to fix it.
Open Canva, Photoshop, or most batch export tools and try to create a carousel. The workflow looks something like this:
Create each slide separately
Export each image individually
Upload them one by one to Instagram
The result is a carousel where each slide is its own independent composition. The edges do not connect. The horizon does not continue. The subject jumps between frames.
For a simple carousel with text cards or separate product shots, that is fine. But for panoramic images, split portraits, or any visual that is meant to flow across multiple slides, independent exports produce a broken result.
A proper carousel is one continuous image split into equal tiles.
You compose the full scene as a single wide frame. You decide where the subject sits across the full width. Then you divide that frame into 2, 3, or 4 equal slides that connect perfectly when someone swipes through.
The difference is immediately visible. Swipe through a well-made carousel and the image flows. Swipe through a badly made one and each slide feels like a different photo.
Most image editors are not built around the concept of a unified carousel crop. They work on one canvas at a time. To create a connected carousel you would need to:
Manually calculate the pixel width of each tile
Crop each one precisely
Export them in the right order
That is doable but tedious, error-prone, and the kind of thing that falls apart when you are preparing content for multiple posts at once.
Some tools offer a basic grid split, but they apply it to the full image dimensions rather than a selected crop area, which means you lose control over composition.
The correct workflow has three steps.
Step 1: Treat the carousel as one composition. Before thinking about slides, frame the full image as a single wide crop. Where is the focal point? How does the subject move across the frame? What do you want the viewer to see as they swipe?
Step 2: Choose your tile count. Instagram carousels support up to 10 slides, but 2, 3, and 4 tiles are the most common for visual carousels. The tile count determines how wide your unified crop needs to be relative to its height.
Step 3: Split and export as aligned tiles. Divide the crop into equal tiles and export each one at the correct Instagram dimensions, 1080x1080 for square carousels.
MintyCrop is built around this workflow. Instead of treating each slide as a separate image, you crop the full carousel as one unified frame directly on your original photo.
Choose Instagram Carousel in the format panel, select 2, 3, or 4 tiles, and upload your image. MintyCrop lets you position the crop across the full width of the photo so you control exactly what appears in each slide. When you export, MintyCrop splits the crop into perfectly aligned tiles at the correct dimensions.
Every slide connects. Every edge lines up. No manual pixel calculations, no guesswork.
Quick tip: The same export also includes any other formats you have enabled, so your square crops, feed crops, and story crops are all generated in the same action.
Instagram supports up to 10 slides in a single carousel post. For photographers, architects, travel creators, and anyone working with wide panoramic images or detailed scenes, filling all 10 slots from a single photo creates a uniquely immersive scrolling experience.
This is where the Grid Cutter feature in MintyCrop comes in. Grid Cutter is a Pro feature that lets you divide one image into a grid of equal tiles across any number of rows and columns.
For a 10-slide horizontal carousel: Set Grid Cutter to 1 row and 10 columns. MintyCrop crops your image into 10 equal vertical slices, each exported at your chosen Instagram dimensions. Upload them to Instagram in order and the full image reveals itself as your audience swipes through every slide.
For an Instagram puzzle grid: Set Grid Cutter to a 3x3 layout and your image gets split into 9 square tiles. Upload them in reverse order (bottom right to top left) and your profile grid assembles the full image across your last 9 posts.
⚠️ Before you split: check your file size
The more tiles you split an image into, the larger the original needs to be to maintain quality. Each tile needs to be at least 1080px wide, so a 3-tile carousel needs a source image at least 3240px wide, and a 10-tile carousel needs at least 10800px wide.
Most photos taken on a recent smartphone or camera are large enough for 2 to 4 tile carousels. Where things go wrong is when someone tries to split a screenshot, a compressed web image, or a photo that has already been resized for social media.
Always start from the largest version of your image. MintyCrop will warn you if your source file is too small for the tile count you have chosen, but the cleanest results always come from the original file.
Grid Cutter supports any combination of rows and columns, so the same tool works for 2x3 layouts, 4x1 horizontal strips, or any other tiled format you need.
MintyCrop also supports:
Portrait carousels at 1080x1350 per tile, the classic 4:5 format, still widely used and safe for the feed
Facebook carousels at 1200x1200, for creators publishing across both platforms in one workflow
The new Instagram 3:4 format (1080x1440)
Instagram updated its profile grid in 2025 to display posts at a 3:4 ratio, and 1080x1440 is now fully supported as an upload size. In 2026 it is arguably the best format for feed posts. It fills more vertical screen space than 4:5 and displays on the profile grid with no cropping at all.
If you want to export at 1080x1440, you can do this in MintyCrop using the custom size input. Enter 1080 width and 1440 height, save it as a custom size, and use it for any single image or carousel export. Pro users can also use Grid Cutter with a custom 1080x1440 output size to split a tall source image into multiple 3:4 tiles for a portrait carousel at the new dimensions.
When you export carousel tiles, the order matters. Slide 1 is what Instagram shows as the cover before anyone taps. Make sure your most visually compelling tile, or the one that creates the most curiosity, is on the left side of your unified crop since that becomes the first slide.
MintyCrop numbers the exported tiles from left to right so the upload order is always clear.
Most tools export carousels as independent images because that is the easier thing to build. The result is carousels that look disconnected and amateur even when the individual images are good.
The right approach is one unified crop, split into aligned tiles, exported in order. For standard carousels MintyCrop handles 2, 3, and 4 tiles natively. For longer carousels up to 10 slides, Grid Cutter gives Pro users the flexibility to go as wide as the image and the platform allow.
