How to make an Instagram grid (3×3, 1×3 and carousel)

Three different things called an “Instagram grid”

The word covers three layouts that need very different source files, so it is worth naming which one you are after before opening anything.

The 3×3 profile grid. One image cut into nine tiles that reassemble into a single picture on your profile page. Nine separate posts, and the picture only appears once all nine are live. This is the one most people mean.

The 1×3 row. One image cut into three tiles that sit side by side across a single row of the profile. Three posts instead of nine, so it comes together far faster and is much easier to keep intact when you post again later.

The carousel. One wide image cut into slides that a reader swipes through inside a single post. Nothing on the profile page changes — the effect lives entirely inside the post, and because it is one post, it never breaks.

The profile grid is the ambitious version and also the fragile one: every new post pushes the whole arrangement one slot along and the picture falls apart. A 1×3 row breaks the same way but is cheaper to redo. A carousel is permanent. Choose accordingly.

What size to start from

Instagram displays uploads at up to 1080 px on the long edge of the frame, and its supported post shapes are square (1:1), portrait (4:5) and landscape (1.91:1). In practice that gives you two target tile sizes worth designing to:

1080 × 1080 px — square tiles. The classic grid look.
1080 × 1350 px — portrait 4:5 tiles. More vertical space per post in the feed.

The catch is that those are the sizes of one finished tile, not of the photo you feed into a splitter. Multiply before you start:

3×3 grid, square tiles (1080 × 1080 each) → prepare 3240 × 3240 px
3×3 grid, 4:5 tiles (1080 × 1350 each) → prepare 3240 × 4050 px
1×3 row, square tiles (1080 × 1080 each) → prepare 3240 × 1080 px
1×3 row, 4:5 tiles (1080 × 1350 each) → prepare 3240 × 1350 px
Carousel, N slides at 4:5 (1080 × 1350 each) → prepare (N × 1080) × 1350 px

Going bigger than that is fine and often smart — starting from, say, 4500 × 4500 for a 3×3 leaves each tile with headroom, and Instagram will scale it down on its own. Going smaller is what hurts: a 1080 × 1080 photo split into nine gives you 360 px tiles, and Instagram will happily upscale those into mush.

One more reason for headroom: how the profile page crops the grid preview is Instagram’s decision, not yours, and it has changed more than once over the years. Extra pixels are what let a grid survive that.

Splitting the image

Both of our splitting tools run entirely inside the browser — the photo is read from your device and cut with the Canvas API, so there is no upload step and nothing is stored on a server. Closing the tab clears everything.

For a 3×3 profile grid

Open the Instagram grid maker and drop in a JPEG, PNG or WebP photo. The layout starts on 3×3, so there is nothing to configure.
Check the live preview. Cut lines are drawn over the photo itself, and the tile count and exact pixel size of each tile are shown next to it.
Pick an output format — PNG for lossless tiles, or JPEG and WebP with a quality setting from 50 to 100 (85 by default). Note that JPEG has no transparency, so transparent areas are filled with white.
Split, then download the tiles one at a time or all at once as a ZIP. Grid tiles are named _r1c1 through _r3c3, row by row.
Post them back to front. Your profile shows the newest post first, so upload piece r3c3 first and r1c1 last. Get this backwards and the picture comes out mirrored diagonally.

For a 1×3 row

Same tool, one change: pick the 1×3 preset instead of 3×3, or type 1 row and 3 columns yourself. Post those three back to front as well — rightmost tile first.

For a carousel

Open the image splitter with your wide image.
Use grid mode with 1 row and however many columns you want slides — up to 20 either way — or switch to fixed size mode and split every 1080 px horizontally, which gives you exact 1080 px slides and lets the final piece keep whatever remains.
Split, download the ZIP, and add the pieces to one post in normal left-to-right order. A carousel is not reversed the way the profile grid is.

Grid mode divides the image as evenly as the pixels allow: when the width does not divide cleanly, the leftover pixels are spread one each across the first columns, so the tiles add up to the original exactly rather than dropping a stray edge column.

What the tools do not do

Worth knowing before you rely on this for a client:

Nothing is resized. Tiles are cut at the source resolution, one to one. If you want 1080 px tiles, the source has to be big enough — the splitter will not upscale for you, and that is deliberate.
Nothing is cropped to fit Instagram. The image is divided into exact pixel tiles at the layout you chose, with no extra crop bolted on to match how the app happens to display a grid this month. That is why the source sizes above matter.
The file picker takes JPEG, PNG and WebP. Anything else — a HEIC straight off an iPhone, for instance — is worth converting first.
PNG is lossless; JPEG and WebP are re-encoded at the quality you pick, so those two can introduce compression artifacts of their own on top of Instagram’s.

FAQ

How do I split an image for an Instagram grid?

Start from a source at least three times the tile size you want (3240 × 3240 px for nine 1080 px square tiles), drop it into the Instagram grid maker, confirm the cut lines in the preview, and split. You get nine files named by row and column, downloadable individually or as a ZIP.

What is the right size for a 3 grid on Instagram?

For a 1×3 row of square tiles, prepare a 3240 × 1080 px image; each tile lands at 1080 × 1080. For 4:5 tiles, prepare 3240 × 1350 px and each tile lands at 1080 × 1350.

In what order do I post the tiles?

Back to front for anything that lives on the profile page — grid or row — because the newest post appears first. A carousel is the exception: its slides stay in normal reading order inside the post.

Can I do this without an app or an account?

Yes. Both tools run in the browser with no installation and no sign-in, and the photo never leaves your device — there is no upload at any point.

What if I want a layout other than 3×3?

Rows and columns both go from 1 to 20, so 2×2, 2×3, 4×4 and anything else in that range works. The presets built into the tool are 3×3, 1×3, 1×2, 2×2, 2×3 and 4×4, and you can type any other combination.

Will splitting reduce the quality of my photo?

The cut itself does not resample anything. Choose PNG to keep the tiles lossless. JPEG and WebP re-encode at the quality you set, which is fine for photos at 85 or above but visible on flat graphics and text.