How to Create a Seamless Carousel Instagram Post on Canva for Free
1. Create a new design in Canva with a custom size.
Before you begin creating your seamless carousel Instagram post, first determine how many slides your design will be. This will affect the overall dimensions of your project. Multiply the number of slides in your post by 1080 px to find the total width of your project. Once you have that number, open up Canva and navigate to Create a design > Custom size and type in the width that you just calculated, 1080 px in height, and click Create new design. This design includes all the slides in your carousel post. Next, we're going to separate them into individual slides.
2. Add markers so you can see where each slide ends and begins.
In order to design your seamless carousel post, you'll need to add markers so you know where each slide begins and ends. To do this, add square elements that are 1080 by 1080 px. I recommend making these squares transparent with a 1 pt border, so they don't interfere with the design process. Copy and paste these squares across your design, representing each slide. When you have them all in the right spot, lock them in place so they don't move around while you're creating.
3. Create your design, and unlock and delete the 1080 x 1080 px squares when you're finished.
Then it's time for you to create! Design your seamless carousel post however you see fit. You want the design to look aesthetically pleasing across the entire design, and also make sure you like the look of it inside of each individual square. When you're finished, unlock all the 1080 x 1080 px squares and delete them.
4. Download your design.
Once the squares are deleted and your design is ready, navigate to Share > Download. I recommend downloading the file as a .png. Download your entire design to your computer. The final step is to split it up into slides!
5. Use a free equal image splitter website to slice your design into individual slides.
Now that you have your seamless carousel Instagram design, let's split it up into individual slides. These are the slides you'll upload as a carousel post to the Instagram app. You do this via a free equal image splitter website—here is the one I recommend using.
Upload your file that you downloaded from Canva. Then, add the correct number of parts in width. This number is equal to the number of slides in your carousel post. The number of parts in height should equal 1. You can output your images as the .jpeg default, then click OK. Lastly, download your .zip file with all your images! When you go to upload your seamless carousel post to Instagram, just be sure to upload them in the correct order.
Free Instagram Seamless Carousel Template
I hope you found this tutorial helpful! If you'd like to skip steps 1 and 2 and go right into designing, you can download my free Instagram seamless carousel Canva templates here. These Canva templates include the layout you need to create seamless carousel posts with anywhere from 2-7 slides, and they're completely free. Download yours here, and I can't wait to see what you create!
