How to design an Instagram carousel in Photoshop

Instagram carousel is another way of attracting people. Most of the instagrammers today are creating carousels to sell their products, build influence, and make money on Instagram. 

I know if you are a coach or a solopreneur selling digital products, it may overwhelm you with the carousels that people are creating. 

In this post, you will learn how you can create a seamless Instagram carousel in Photoshop. 

If you are not a graphic designer like me, then you can learn how you can create a seamless Instagram carousel in canva. I have even created a video for the video lovers. 

Before diving into the tutorial, if you are a small business owner, you have good news that you can get this seamless instagram carousel template for Free.I will be soon updating this in the VIP Resource Library.

If you are not a member Sign Up Now to get access to the file.

Let’s dive in to create an Instagram carousel.

Why Instagram carousels?

Everyone knows Instagram is an image driven platform, and it offers 5 different content. That is why most of the brands and small businesses are looking to promote their products and services through Instagram. 

People get bored just to see a single post- like a post in FB feed. That’s where the Instagram carousels come into the picture. To stop the scrollers, simply scrolling through the feed, Instagram carousels let them swipe and read. 

Instagram Carousel posts have the highest engagement rate(1.94%) as of now in 2021.

If you are a coach or a solopreneur like me, then I swear Instagram carousels will bring in more sales. 

To build more engagement with your audience, see how you can utilise Instagram reels. 

5 creative ways to use Instagram carousels:

With the right content strategy, you can sell more products on Instagram. Not sure how you can utilise Instagram carousels? Here’s how you can utilise Instagram carousels.

1. Use Instagram carousels to promote your digital product and courses
2. Teach your audience through Instagram carousels
3. Create user generated roundup posts
4. Showcase your product reviews.
5. Share your brand stories like – launching a product, behind scenes, etc.

How to create Instagram carousels in photoshop?

Creating a seamless Instagram carousel in photoshop includes three parts. 

1. Setting up a file in photoshop.
2. Getting images for your carousels and adding them.
3. Editing and customising and exporting the file.

Let’s see how you can get images for the carousels. 

I use Freepik to get the images. In this tutorial, I used a simple and easy background with little editing features. If you want to create a more pleasing carousel with a variety of images, you can find the images as shown below. 

How to find best images for Instagram carousels:

Step 1: Go to Freepik or any other image sites like pixabay, stock unlimited, etc. 

Step 2: Use the keywords that portray the essence of the image. Look at the below example,

I want a woman to do exercise. I am entering “female athlete practicing” and the results are here.

Tip: Make sure you are choosing images that are having the same background or the same photo at different angles. If you scroll more, you can get similar photos. 

Step 3: Download the photos and save it a folder. 

Let’s move to photoshop,

Open photoshop and let’s set up the file first. 

Step 1:Setting up your seamless Instagram carousel in photoshop: 

Go to File>> New>> In the dimensions, enter the value as below. 

If you want to create a square carousel post, then – Enter width as 10800 and Height as 1080

If you want to create a portrait carousel post, then – enter width as 10800 and height as 1350

I am going with the first one. I am going to show you how you can create a square Instagram carousel post. 

Look at the image below:

Then click the create button at the bottom.

You will find an art board like this

Step 2: Create Guides

Guides let you create a flawless design. In Instagram, we will add our brand identities in the post. I called these the lower thirds. To make sure you are adding your brand name in the same place in every post, you need guides. 

Let’s create one

Go to view >> click create new guide layout 

And add the value 10 to the columns tab, as shown below:

Now you find the artboard is split into 10 columns.

Step 3:Spacing your lower thirds: 

As I mentioned before, guides let you split the art board into 10 images and now we will make horizontal guides to enter brand names. 

On your sidebar click on the rectangle marquee tool and in the top menu bar change the style as fixed size and value as Width: 200px and Height 200px

Now click on the artboard.When you click on the artboard, you will find a rectangle that is created with dots. Move to the top left corner and bottom left corner to create guides for the top and bottom of the post. 

Press ctrl+R to show the rulers

Once the rulers are shown, click and drag the ruler from the top, till the end of the square created in the top left corner. 

Now repeat the same process in the bottom and add a guide in the bottom too. 

Once added, the artboard looks like this. 

Now with the horizontal and vertical guides placed, we will add the text in the lower thirds. That is within the horizontal guides. 

Examples of lower thirds:

1.Adding swipe left

2.Tag an influencer or tag your friends or share in your story

3.Your brand name

4.Your Name: 

Step 4: Choose background colors:

Click on the background layers button and change the background if you wish. 

Now go to Edit>> Fill >> From the drop-down click on background and click ok 

Now your background should be the color you want. 

Step 5: Add Lower third text

Click the text tool and fill in the text you want. 

Your lower thirds can be anything you want. It may be your name or your company name as i mentioned above.

I have added mine here. 

To copy it in all the all slides, hold Alt+Shift+drag and place it in all the slides as shown below

Step 6: Let’s add background images as we want. 

 Just drag the image you want as background and position it. 

Look at my final background. 

Step 7: Add your Text:

I usually plan my Instagram post earlier. I write a copy for every slide the day before I create the carousels. 

You can either write the copies either in the Google Keep or docs or any writer you want.

Look at my sample below:

Choose the text from the workspace and add the text you want

You can customise the text size as shown above using the text customisation panel.

Step 8: Your end slide

Add the CTA as you want and finish your end slides

Don’t forget that your end slide brings you the sales. Mention who you are and what you do. Write what your readers want to do. 

Examples of Instagram carousel End slide CTA’s:

1.Leave a comment below:

2.checkout the Link in bio

3.Share in your story

4.Tag your friends

5.Buy the product, etc. 

These are the Call to actions that help you in beating the Instagram algorithm. 

Now that you learnt to create a seamless Instagram carousel in Photoshop. The Last step is to splice this single artboard into 10 posts. 

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Step 9: Slice the artboard into 10. 

In the workspace, 

Find the splice tool >> click on the splice tool>>On the top menu bar, select click Show auto slices.

Now click on the artboard. 

Right click to open a window where you can find options to divide slices. 

Click divide slice and make sure you enter the value 10.

That’s it. 

Now that you need to export this into a png file.

Step 10: Export as png

On the File>> Choose Export>> save for web legacy

Then on the export screen.

Preset : Choose – png-24 

Select all the images and click save

What’s Next?

Happy that you have learnt to create a seamless Instagram carousel in photoshop. Now you can download this template and use it directly. All you need to do is to open the file and add images and text you prefer. You need not to create guides. 

I hope this saves you enough time. Join my Free resources library and download the template right now. 

If you have any doubts, leave in the comments below