How to make a photo collage for Instagram: sizes, the 3:4 grid, stories and carousels

Instagram resizes, compresses, crops to a 3:4 thumbnail on your profile and hides part of every story behind its interface. A collage that looks great in the editor can arrive cut in half. Here is how to make one that survives the trip, in the feed, in the grid and in a story.

1. Pick the size first

Start from the format, not from the photos. Instagram resizes every upload to 1080 pixels wide; a collage exported at that width keeps its sharpness, a wider one is downscaled, a narrower one is stretched and softens.

In StudioCollage, pick the Instagram format before adding photos: the canvas is at the right size and the export comes out at 1080 pixels wide without a resizing step. Every other platform size is in the sizes guide.

2. The 3:4 profile grid, and what it trims

In January 2025 Instagram changed the profile grid from squares to 3:4 rectangles. Every post is cropped to 3:4 in the grid, whatever its original ratio. The full image still opens when someone taps it, but the grid is what a visitor sees first.

A square 2x2 grid and a 4:5 layout. In the 3:4 grid, the square one loses a strip on each side; the portrait one loses only a sliver on each side.

• 4:5 collages lose about 6 percent on the sides, 35 pixels on each edge. Keep faces and captions out of that strip.
• Square collages lose about 12 percent on each side. A 2x2 grid keeps its four faces if they are centered in their cells; a 3x3 grid loses the edges of the outer columns.
• Landscape collages lose more than a third. Do not post them as collages; stack the photos instead.

If you care about how the profile looks as a whole, build at 4:5 and keep the important cells away from the left and right edges.

3. Choose a layout that fits your photos

Count your photos and their orientation before you pick a grid. Three landscape shots want three rows, not three columns; one hero shot and a few details want a big cell with satellites around it.

Same photos, two layouts. The right one gives the portrait room to breathe.

On a 1080 pixel wide post, two columns give cells of about 535 pixels, three columns about 355, four columns about 265. Faces need about 250 pixels to read on a phone, so six photos in a 3x2 grid is the practical maximum for a post. How many photos to put in a collage has a layout for every count. If you are not sure, press Auto: it reads the orientation of every photo and proposes several layouts that respect it.

4. Keep faces whole

The most common collage mistake is a cell that crops a face at the forehead. Zoom out in the cell until every head has air above it, or use a layout with a taller cell for portraits.

5. Stories: the two bands to keep clear

A story is 1080 x 1920, but Instagram draws its interface over the image: your name and the progress bar at the top, the reply box and the buttons at the bottom. Keep faces and text out of roughly the top 250 pixels and the bottom 340 pixels.

Two story layouts whose top row is calm (sky, water) so the interface covers nothing that matters.

StudioCollage shades the two bands when the story format is selected, so a cell that lands there is visible at a glance; the story templates already respect them. The Layout mode inside the Instagram story camera is the alternative for a quick one, with fixed grids and no control over gaps or sizes.

6. Collage or carousel?

Past six photos, a single collage turns faces into thumbnails. The carousel is the other tool: up to twenty slides, each a photo or a small collage, swiped one at a time.

• Collage when the photos belong together at a glance: a birthday, an outfit, a before and after, a set of products.
• Carousel when there are more than six, or when each photo deserves the full frame: a trip, a wedding, a portfolio.
• Both: a collage as the first slide, the individual photos behind it. The collage stops the scroll, the slides reward the swipe.

Keep every slide at the same ratio (4:5 works for both collage and single photos); the first slide decides the crop for all the others.

7. Export so Instagram does not soften it

Export at exactly 1080 pixels wide, as PNG if the collage has text or sharp borders, as JPG at high quality if it is photos only. Then post it from your phone without resizing: Instagram will do the last compression itself, once.

• Do not screenshot the collage: you would post a picture of a picture, at screen resolution.
• Do not send it through a messaging app first: most of them recompress images.
• Check the preview in the Instagram composer before posting, and reframe if the crop hits something important.

On a phone, StudioCollage runs in the browser with no app to install: pick the Instagram format, add the photos, press Auto or choose a layout, download, post. The other ways to make a collage on a phone, with their limits, are in the iPhone guide and the Android guide.

Frequently asked questions