A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating an Instagram Carousel Post using Canva

* This post contains affiliate links. That means that if you make a purchase after clicking on a link, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

SCROLL DOWN FOR A FREE CANVA TEMPLATE!

Instagram carousel posts (the ones with multiple images that you swipe through) can be an effective way to communicate a tonne of value, show off multiple products or share a series of great images that really help you connect with your audience.

Of course, you can simply upload multiple images - up to 10 in fact. But how cool do carousel posts look when you have images or elements splitting multiple frames? And how enticing is it for your audience to swipe across to see the rest?

Seamless Instagram carousel posts are super simple to make. And you can even make them in our favourite design tool, Canva!

How to make an Instagram carousel post using Canva:

1. Sign up for a free Canva account, or log in to your existing account.

2. Create a custom design, 1080px high and 1080px x the number of images you would like in your carousel wide. Yes, we need to do some maths. So if you would like a 6 image carousel, make your custom design 1080px high x 6,480px wide (1080px x 6).

3. Now you want to add guides to help you see where the joins will be. To do this, click File and then Show Rulers and also File and then Show Guides.

4. Now hover over the vertical ruler until your cursor changes to a double-headed arrow thingy and hold your mouse button down and drag the guide out to 1080px and let go. You want to do this every 1080px so 2160px, 3,240px, 4,320px and 5,400px. (Keep going if you want your carousel to be more than 6 images wide.

What you should then have is something like this:

I have created a template for you to save you some time - click on the image to access it:

When you have accessed the template, make sure to switch on your guides in Canva by clicking File and then Show Guides.

5. Now you can create your post. Make sure to add some elements across the guides as this will encourage your audience to swipe across. When you are happy with the finished design, download it as a PNG file.

6. Next we need to split the long image up into 6 separate images. To do this, head to the Pine Tools split image tool. 

Input your image by uploading it from your device. Then you want to split horizontally, by equal height, with the number of blocks equal to the number of images, in this case, that is 6:

7. Select PNG as the output format and then click SPLIT IMAGE!

8. Now you have 6 separate images which you can upload (in the right order) to Instagram! You can share them to your phone and upload directly or use Facebook's Business Suite to upload from your computer. Or you could use a third-party tool like Publer to post or schedule for later.

Video Instructions on how to Create an Instagram Carousel Post using Canva: