How to Post Multiple Photos on Instagram Without Cropping

It’s one of the most frustrating moments for any Instagram user: you’ve selected the perfect collection of photos for a carousel post, but the app forces you into a rigid square crop, cutting off heads, landscapes, and important details. This guide will walk you through exactly how to post multiple photos on Instagram without cropping, giving you complete control over how your images appear. We’ll cover why this happens and provide clear, step-by-step methods to get your full-size portrait and landscape shots to live happily together in the same post.

Why Instagram Crops Your Multi-Photo Posts

Ever wonder why your beautiful vertical shot gets butchered when you add a horizontal one to the same post? It comes down to a simple rule: in a multi-photo post, Instagram forces all photos to conform to the aspect ratio of the first photo you select.

Even more restrictively, when you select multiple photos at once, Instagram often defaults to a 1:1 square format for the entire set, regardless of their original shapes. The app is designed for uniformity. While it loves a clean grid, this one-size-fits-all approach clashes with creativity, especially when you have a mix of vertical and horizontal images from a photoshoot, trip, or event.

If you've ever tried to pinch and zoom to fix one image, only to find it has messed up another, you know the struggle. The good news is that you don't have to surrender to Instagram’s automatic cropping. The secret isn't a hidden in-app trick, it's about preparing your photos before you upload them.

The Ultimate Solution: Pre-Sizing Your Photos for a Perfect Fit

The most reliable way to post multiple photos without cropping is to make every photo the exact same size before you even open the Instagram app. By creating a uniform canvas for all your pictures, you trick Instagram’s algorithm. When the app sees that every image is already the same dimension, it has nothing to crop, and your photos will appear exactly as you intended.

This method gives you total creative freedom. It lets you decide how to fit a horizontal photo into a vertical frame (or vice-versa) by adding backgrounds or borders, rather than letting Instagram decide for you by cutting off content.

Step 1: Choose Your Aspect Ratio

First, you need to decide on a single aspect ratio for your entire carousel. While you can technically choose any supported size, one is better than all the others for engagement.

• The Best Choice: 4:5 Portrait (1080px by 1350px). This is the holy grail. A 4:5 vertical post takes up the most screen real estate on a user’s feed, grabbing more attention and encouraging them to stop scrolling. Since most people hold their phones vertically, this format feels the most immersive. We strongly recommend using this for all your carousels.
• The Old Standby: 1:1 Square (1080px by 1080px). Your classic Instagram square. It’s a perfectly safe choice, and everything will look neat and tidy. However, you're giving up valuable screen space compared to the 4:5 portrait.
• The Niche Player: 1.91:1 Landscape (1080px by 566px). A horizontal format is rarely the best choice for the main feed. It creates the smallest image, gets lost between bigger posts, and is generally less engaging. Only use this if your entire series is exclusively panoramic shots that can't be adapted.

For the rest of this tutorial, we will be using the industry-standard 1080 x 1350 pixels (a 4:5 aspect ratio) as our universal canvas size.

Step 2: Use a Simple Editing App to Resize Your Photos

You don't need to be a graphic designer or own expensive software. Free mobile and desktop apps make this process incredibly simple. Some popular and user-friendly options include:

• Canva: Perfect for this task, available on both desktop and mobile. Its free version is all you need.
• Snapseed: A powerful and free mobile photo editor from Google.
• VSCO: Known for its filters, but it also has solid editing tools, including a resize function.
• Adobe Express: Adobe’s free and simplified design app.

We'll use Canva as our main example because it's so direct and easy to follow.

Step 3: Create Your Custom 4:5 Canvas and Add Your Photos

Now, let's get into the step-by-step workflow. You will repeat this short process for every single photo you want to include in your carousel.

A. Creating the Canvas in Canva

1. Open Canva and tap the "+" button.
2. Select "Custom Size" (or "Custom Dimensions").
3. Enter the dimensions: 1080 for width and 1350 for height. Make sure "px" (pixels) is selected as the unit.
4. Tap "Create new design." You now have a blank, perfectly sized 4:5 canvas.

B. Placing Each Photo onto the Canvas

This is where you solve the cropping problem. This single 1080px by 1350px canvas will be your frame for every photo in the slideshow, regardless of its original orientation.

If Your Original Photo is Vertical (Portrait):

This is the easiest scenario. Upload your vertical photo to the canvas. In most cases, it will be close to the 4:5 aspect ratio already. You can simply stretch it to fill the frame. If it's a slightly different proportion (like a 2:3 from a DSLR), you'll need to center it, which might leave small bars at the top and bottom. That’s perfectly fine!

If Your Original Photo is Horizontal (Landscape):

This is where the magic happens. A horizontal photo won't fill a vertical canvas. Don’t just zoom in to fill the space - that’s just cropping your own picture! Instead, center the horizontal photo on the canvas. This will leave blank space above and below it. You have a few great options for filling that space:

• Solid Color Background: The default is usually white, which provides a clean, minimalist look. You can also change the background to black for a dramatic effect, or even use one of your brand colors to keep the post on-brand.
• Blurred Background: A very popular and professional-looking technique. Place the same horizontal photo on the canvas, expand it to fill the entire frame, then apply a heavy blur effect. Now, place the original (non-blurred) horizontal photo on top of it. This creates a soft, cohesive background that isn't distracting.

If Your Original Photo is Square:

Similar to landscape photos, a square photo won't fill the 4:5 vertical canvas. Center it in the frame, and you'll have smaller bars of empty space at the top and bottom. Again, you can leave them white, change the color, or use the blurred background trick.

Once you’ve settled on the look for your first photo, save it to your camera roll. Then, create a new 1080x1350 canvas for the next photo in your series and repeat the process. Put every image, no matter its original dimension, onto this same canvas size.

Step 4: Upload Your Prepared Photos to Instagram

Once you've exported all your photos, the hard part is over. Now, posting is easy:

1. Open Instagram and tap the post creation button.
2. Select all the photos you just edited. Since they are all exactly 1080x1350, Instagram won't try to crop anything.
3. Make sure the aspect ratio button in the bottom left (it looks like <, >,) is set to show the full vertical image. It should default to this correctly if your first image is a 4:5 portrait.
4. Arrange the photos in your desired order, write your caption, and post!

Your carousel will now be perfectly formatted. Users can swipe through your photos, and each one will appear exactly as you designed it - no weird crops, no cut-off content. Your landscape and portrait shots can finally coexist.

Advanced Trick: The Seamless Panorama Carousel

Want to take your carousels to the next level? You can use this no-crop resizing method to create a seamless panoramic effect where a wide horizontal photo flows smoothly across multiple slides.

Here’s how it works:

1. Start with a wide photo. A panorama or any wide landscape shot works best.
2. Calculate the dimensions. Determine how many slides you want. For a two-slide panorama, you'd double the width of a square post (1080px * 2 = 2160px). So your canvas would be 2160px by 1080px. For a three-slide panorama, it would be 3240px by 1080px.
3. Split the image. Use a tool like Canva or Photoshop to slice your single wide image into two or three perfectly sized 1080x1080 squares. There are also mobile apps like "Unsquared" or "Panorama Crop" that do this automatically.
4. Post the images in order. When you upload these individual squares to an Instagram carousel, they will line up perfectly, creating an immersive swipeable experience.

This technique is fantastic for showing off stunning landscapes, group photos, or detailed art where a single square format just wouldn't do it justice.

Final Thoughts

Mastering the multi-photo post on Instagram is all about taking back control from the app's default settings. By pre-formatting your photos into a single, consistent aspect ratio - preferably a 4:5 portrait (1080x1350) - before uploading, you guarantee that none of your work gets awkwardly cropped. This simple preparation step elevates your content, ensures a professional look, and lets your portfolio shine.

After perfecting your carousel images, the next step is fitting them into your content calendar. We built Postbase to make that part seamless. Our visual calendar lets you drag and drop your ready-to-go content, schedule posts far in advance, and see your entire multi-platform strategy at a glance. It's the simple, modern tool we wished we had for turning great content into a reliable posting schedule without all the complexity.