How to Make a Sliding Instagram Post

A sliding Instagram post lets you break a single, wide image across multiple slides, creating a seamless panoramic effect that encourages users to swipe. This simple guide will show you exactly how to plan, create, and post a swipeable carousel that stops scrollers in their tracks and boosts your engagement. We’ll cover the exact dimensions you need, free tools to get the job done, and creative ideas you can use today.

What Exactly Is a Sliding Instagram Post (and Why Bother)?

A sliding Instagram post, often called a carousel or a panorama, is a single picture strategically sliced into multiple pieces. When uploaded as a carousel post, viewers swipe through the images, and the picture appears to seamlessly "slide" across their screen. It's an optical trick that transforms an ordinary post into an interactive experience.

But it's not just a cool visual effect. Sliding posts are powerful engagement magnets for a few key reasons:

• Increases Dwell Time: When someone stops to swipe through your entire post, they spend more time interacting with your content. Instagram's algorithm notices this extended dwell time and sees it as a positive signal, potentially showing your post to more people.
• Sparks Curiosity: The first slide acts as a hook. If it's part of a larger image, it creates an open loop that viewers want to close by swiping to see the rest. It's a fantastic way to reel people in.
• Perfect for Modern Storytelling: You have more space to work with. You can guide a user through a process (like a tutorial), reveal a surprise, build a narrative, or showcase a wide-shot product or landscape photo without compromising its scale.

Essentially, you’re turning a static image into a mini journey. That small moment of interaction can make a huge difference in how your content performs.

Step 1: Planning and Storyboarding Your Seamless Carousel

Before you open any design tool, take a moment to plan your post. The most effective sliding posts aren't just wide photos, they're thoughtfully designed to guide the viewer from one frame to the next. What's the story you're trying to tell with the swipe?

Map Out Your Content Flow

Think of each slide as a scene in a short story. What's the logical flow?

• For a Tutorial: Does each slide represent a clear step?
• For a Product Showcase: Are you moving from a wide shot to a detailed close-up?
• For a Data Reveal: Are you introducing a question on slide one and revealing the answer with data across the next few?

Grab a piece of paper or open a simple document and sketch it out. A quick storyboard - even just boxes with squiggles in them - helps you visualize how the content will "move" as someone swipes. Pay special attention to the breaks between slides. You can either make them invisible or use them intentionally to reveal a new piece of information.

Nail the First Slide

The first slide is your digital storefront. It has to do all the work of convincing someone to care enough to swipe. Make sure it's visually compelling and clearly hints that there's more to see. Some creators even add a small text prompt like "Swipe left!" or a subtle arrow graphic to drive the point home.

Step 2: Getting the Dimensions Right (The Math Part)

This is the most important technical step. Getting the dimensions wrong is the difference between a seamless panorama and a jumbled mess of misaligned images. The total width of your canvas is determined by the width of a single Instagram post multiplied by the number of slides you want.

Instagram supports a few aspect ratios, but two are best for carousels:

• Square (1:1): Each slide is 1080px by 1080px. This is the classic format.
• Portrait (4:5): Each slide is 1080px by 1350px. This is highly recommended because it takes up more vertical screen space, making your post more impactful.

The height of your canvas will always be the height of your chosen aspect ratio (1080px or 1350px). The width is what changes.

The formula is: Total Width = 1080px * (Number of Slides)

Here are the final canvas sizes you’d use for a portrait (4:5) carousel:

• 2 Slides: 2160 pixels wide x 1350 pixels tall
• 3 Slides: 3240 pixels wide x 1350 pixels tall
• 4 Slides: 4320 pixels wide x 1350 pixels tall
• 5 Slides: 5400 pixels wide x 1350 pixels tall

And for a square (1:1) carousel:

• 2 Slides: 2160 pixels wide x 1080 pixels tall
• 3 Slides: 3240 pixels wide x 1080 pixels tall
• 4 Slides: 4320 pixels wide x 1080 pixels tall
• 5 Slides: 5400 pixels wide x 1080 pixels tall

Step 3: How to Design the Carousel (Using Canva)

Canva is a free, browser-based tool that makes creating the extra-wide source image incredibly simple. Here's a quick walkthrough.

1. Create a Custom Canvas

On the Canva home screen, click "Create a design" in the top right, then select "Custom size." Enter the total width and height you calculated in the last step. For this example, let's make a 3-slide portrait carousel, so we'll enter 3240 x 1350 pixels.

2. Set Up Your Guides

Guides will show you exactly where one slide ends and the next begins, so you don't accidentally put an important detail (like someone's eye) right on the cut-off line. First, make sure rulers are visible by going to File > View Settings > Show rulers and guides.

Now, drag vertical guides from the ruler on the left edge of your screen and place them at each slice point. For our 3-slide-wide design, you'll place guides at:

• 1080px
• 2160px

You now have a perfect visual representation of your three empty Instagram slides, all on one connected canvas.

3. Design Across the Slides

Now for the fun part. Drag your photos, text, and other graphic elements onto the canvas. Arrange them across the guides to create your continuous image. Remember:

• Try to place compelling elements across the splits to encourage the swipe. A line of text that continues to the next slide or a graphic that bridges two frames is a great way to do this.
• Pay attention to your "safe zones." Each individual slide should still look good on its own and make sense even if someone doesn't swipe.

4. Download Your Masterpiece

Once your design is finished, click "Share" in the top right, then "Download." Select either a PNG or JPG file type for the best quality and save the single, giant image to your computer or phone.

Step 4: Slicing Your Image Into Pieces

You now have one big image. The final step is to slice it into individual squares or portraits that you can upload to Instagram. You don't need fancy software for this.

Method 1: Use a Free Online Tool (The Easy Way)

There are countless free web tools that do this perfectly. A popular and reliable option is PineTools Split Image.

1. Go to the website and upload the large image you just downloaded from Canva.
2. Underneath your uploaded image, find the "options" section.
3. Choose to split the image "Horizontally."
4. Set the "Quantity of blocks" to the number of slides you designed (in our case, 3).
5. Click the big green "Split image!" button.
6. The tool will generate your individual images, which you can download as separate files or in a convenient ZIP folder. That's it!

Method 2: Use Adobe Photoshop (The Pro Way)

If you already have Photoshop, you have even more control.

1. Open your large image in Photoshop.
2. Select the Slice Tool (it's often nested under the Crop Tool, or you can press 'C' multiple times to cycle to it).
3. At the top of the window, click "Slice from Guides." Photoshop will instantly create slices based on the guides you set up.
4. Go to File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy).
5. Make sure you choose JPG or PNG as your preset, then click "Save." Critically, ensure "All Slices" is selected in the export options. Photoshop will automatically save each slice as a perfectly numbered individual file (e.g., image-01.jpg, image-02.jpg).

Step 5: Publishing Your Sliding Post to Instagram

You’ve done all the hard work. Uploading is simple.

1. Get the sliced images onto your phone.
2. Open Instagram and tap the '+' icon to create a new post.
3. Instead of selecting a single image, tap the "Select Multiple" icon (it looks like a stack of squares).
4. Tap on your sliced images in the correct order: tap the first slide, then the second, then the third, and so on. The app will preview the sliding experience for you.
5. Once they are selected in the right order, hit “Next.” Now you can add a filter if you want (but it’s usually better to have your edits done beforehand).
6. Finally, write a great caption. Don't be shy about telling people what to do! Something as simple as "Swipe to meet the team 👉" or "Keep swiping for the full view" can significantly increase the chances that people will interact.
7. Add your hashtags, location, and tags as usual, then hit "Share."

Congratulations! You've just created a stunning, seamless sliding post that will captivate your audience.

Final Thoughts

Creating a sliding Instagram post is a fantastic way to elevate your feed and capture attention. Once you understand the simple math of figuring out your canvas size, the process of designing, slicing, and uploading becomes second nature. It's an extra step that signals to your audience - and the algorithm - that you’re making high-effort, engaging content.

Planning these multipart carousels is the hardest part, especially when you’re trying to fit them alongside your Reels, Stories, and single-image updates. Organizing all those different content types is exactly why we built the visual calendar in Postbase. You can schedule all your posts - videos, carousels, and everything in between - and see exactly how your grid and feed will look weeks or months in advance. It helps you get a bird's-eye view, so you can stop just posting content and start telling a bigger story.