Split an image into a grid

One picture, many tiles

Cut an image into an even grid and get every tile back as a numbered zip. The numbering runs in reading order — left to right, top to bottom — which is the order they get posted in.

The Instagram grid

The main reason people do this. A 3×3 split turns one image into nine posts that reassemble into the original when viewed on a profile. Posting order is the catch: Instagram fills the grid right to left and bottom to top, so the tiles have to be posted in reverse of the numbering here. Tile 9 goes up first.

It is worth planning around a 3×3 or 3×6 split rather than an arbitrary one, since the profile grid is three wide and a partial row leaves the effect broken until you fill it.

Panoramas

A 1×3 or 1×4 split of a wide photo produces slices for a carousel post, which lets people swipe across a panorama rather than squinting at a letterboxed strip.

Uneven divisions

Dimensions rarely divide evenly by three. Tiles are made the same size and a few pixels are left over at the right and bottom edges, which keeps every tile identical. Crop to an exact multiple first if those pixels matter.

Format

JPG for photographs. PNG if the image has flat colour, text or transparency, where JPEG artefacts would show at the tile edges.

Plan the crop first

The split is even, so whatever is at a tile boundary gets cut there. A face landing across the seam between two tiles looks wrong in the grid and worse in a single post. Crop the image so that the important content sits inside a cell rather than across a join — it is much easier to plan before splitting than to fix afterwards.

It runs on your device

Nothing is uploaded, however large the image.