How to Turn One Image Into a Social Carousel

2 min read

Most carousels are built slide by slide, which is why most carousels do not hold together. The alternative is to build one wide image and cut it up afterwards. The design runs continuously across the panels, so swiping reveals the next part of a single picture instead of turning a page.

That continuity is the whole mechanic. A shape that starts on slide one and finishes on slide two is a reason to swipe, and swipes are what the feed rewards.

How to build one

1. 1

   Start with the slides canvas

   Each panel is 1120 × 1280, and the canvas is that panel repeated. Two slides gives you 2240 × 1280 to design across, three gives 3360, four gives 4480.

2. 2

   Choose the split first, not last

   Pick 2, 3 or 4 slides before you compose. The split never resizes what you have already made, so deciding late means redoing the layout.

3. 3

   Compose across the seams, not around them

   Put your mockup or headline so it crosses a cut. If every element sits neatly inside one panel you have made separate images that happen to be adjacent.

4. 4

   Keep the cuts clear of small text

   A headline can survive being split. A caption cannot. Anything small should sit well inside a panel.

5. 5

   Export the whole set at once

   One export slices the canvas and downloads every panel together as a zip, numbered in order — 1-of-3, 2-of-3, 3-of-3 — so you upload them without guessing which is which.

What to put across the slides

• One long screenshot

  A tall landing page or a wide dashboard cut into panels lets people scan something at a readable size that would be unreadable in a single post.

• A before and after

  Two slides, the raw capture on the left and the finished shot on the right. The swipe does the comparison for you.

• A flow, one screen per panel

  Three or four device frames on a continuous backdrop. The background carries across the cuts and holds the set together.

Upload the panels in numbered order and the carousel reassembles itself in the feed.