How to Split One Image Across a Carousel

A carousel built from one picture is cut, not designed. You start with a single wide image and slice it into equal panels, so the set reads as one continuous scene as people swipe through it.

Our free carousel splitter does the cutting in your browser: pick an image, choose how many slides, download a ZIP of numbered PNGs. Nothing is uploaded. PXT Creator Studio itself is a vertical carousel editor and does not split images, so this is a separate tool rather than something inside the editor.

Start wider than you think

The source has to be at least as wide as the finished set. Three 4:5 slides side by side make a 12:5 picture — more than twice as wide as it is tall. A standard phone photo will not stretch across three slides without either heavy cropping or visible softness.

Panoramas, wide screenshots, and anything shot landscape are the images that work here. If your picture is already close to square, one or two slides is the honest answer.

Every slide has to be the same size

This is what breaks sets cut by hand. Mixed dimensions inside one carousel get adjusted inconsistently as people swipe, so the seams jump around. Both Instagram and TikTok size the set from the frame you give them, and any slide that doesn't match gets resized to fit.

Cutting at one fixed slide size, and rounding the cut points rather than the slide widths, is what keeps the seams gap-free. It matters because most image widths don't divide evenly by the number of slides.

Pick the ratio before you cut

Instagram feed: 4:5 portrait takes the most room in the feed. 1:1 square is the safe alternative.
TikTok, Stories, or Reels-style vertical sets: 9:16.

Cut once, at the ratio you're actually going to post. Re-cutting the same picture at a second ratio moves every seam, so the two sets aren't interchangeable.

Three to six slides

A panorama stops reading as one continuous picture once there are too many cuts, and every extra slide is another swipe you're asking someone to make. Instagram allows up to 20 and TikTok up to 35, but those are ceilings, not targets.

Check the seams before you post

Look at the slides side by side at full size first. A cut landing in the middle of a face or a word reads as a mistake rather than a choice, and changing the slide count by one is usually enough to move it.