One photo, one grid puzzle, in the right order
Drop in a photo and this splits it into the tiles of an Instagram profile-grid puzzle — the
classic 3 × 3, a 3-wide banner strip, a 3 × 4 panorama, or any custom layout up to 6 × 6. The
hard part of a grid puzzle is not the slicing, it is the posting order: Instagram shows your
newest post top-left, so the tiles have to go up in reverse. Every tile here is numbered with
its upload position in the live preview and exported as
tile-01-post-first.png through tile-09-post-last.png, so the zip
already lists them in the order you should post them.
Tile boundaries are computed cumulatively in whole pixels, so the pieces reassemble with no gap or overlap, and a draggable focal point decides which part of the photo survives the crop. Portrait 3:4 matches Instagram's profile grid thumbnail exactly; 4:5 and square are there if you care more about how each tile looks opened in the feed. Everything runs in your browser — the image is never uploaded, and iPhone HEIC works. Need a different job? Resize one image for every platform slot with the social media image resizer, make one precise manual crop with the image cropper, shrink the finished tiles with the image compressor, or convert an iPhone photo first with the HEIC to JPG converter.
Frequently asked questions
What order do I post the tiles in?
Bottom-right first, top-left last. Instagram puts your newest post in the top-left slot and pushes everything else along, so a grid puzzle has to be uploaded in reverse reading order. The tool does that numbering for you: every tile is stamped with its upload number in the preview, the list underneath is already sorted, and the files are named tile-01-post-first.png, tile-02.png, … tile-09-post-last.png so the zip lists them in exactly the order you should post them. Post number 1 first and work down.
Will the tiles line up seamlessly on my profile?
Almost — but not perfectly, and that is Instagram, not the export. The profile grid draws a thin gutter (roughly 2–3 px on a phone) between thumbnails, so a split photo always shows faint seams where the tiles meet; the picture reads as one image, it just is not gapless. The other catch is cropping: Instagram's profile grid renders every thumbnail at 3:4, so choose the Portrait 3:4 tile shape if you want the pieces to match edge to edge. Square 1:1 and portrait 4:5 tiles get re-fitted by the grid, which shifts the seams.
What happens if I post something else in the middle?
The whole puzzle shifts by one slot and breaks. Every new post pushes the grid along, so upload all of the tiles back to back, one at a time, and do not post anything else until the last one is up. The same applies later: the puzzle stays intact only while it sits at the top of your profile — the next unrelated post starts pushing it down and out of alignment. Pinning is the usual workaround, but Instagram only lets you pin three posts.
How big should my source image be?
Multiply 1080 by your column count. A 3-wide grid wants at least 3240 px of width, a 3 × 3 puzzle at 3:4 wants roughly 3240 × 4320. If your image is smaller, the tool still exports, but a warning tells you exactly how wide each tile really is in the source so you know how much upscaling Instagram is being handed. You can also switch tile size to "Original density" to export at the source's true resolution instead of stretching up to 1080.
Is my photo uploaded anywhere?
No. Decoding, cropping, slicing, and zipping all happen in your browser with the Canvas API — the image never touches a server, and there is no account, no watermark, and no limit on how many you split. iPhone HEIC photos are decoded locally too, so you can drop a photo straight off your phone.