How to make an Instagram carousel on iPhone (2026)

It’s 11:40pm, the post goes out at 9am, and the “quick edit” is now 90 minutes deep in a browser tab that keeps reloading. Here’s the faster way: this guide shows you how to make an Instagram carousel on your iPhone — start to razor-sharp export — in about ten minutes, using Krevez.

What actually matters before you start

Three decisions make or break a carousel, and they all happen before slide one:

• Size: 1080×1350 (4:5 portrait). It’s the most screen Instagram will give you. Square works; landscape wastes half the phone.
• Slide count: 6–10. Instagram now allows up to 20 slides (Instagram’s help center has the current cap), but attention drops fast — every slide has to earn the next swipe.
• One idea per slide. A carousel is a slideshow, not a poster dump.

Step 1 — Start a project and set the ratio

Open Krevez, tap Create, and set the aspect chip to 4:5. Every slide you add inherits the ratio, so nothing gets cropped at post time. No account, no sign-in — the app works entirely on your device.

Step 2 — Drop your photos in

Tap the + button and pull photos straight from your library. The canvas is real: pinch to zoom, drag to position, rotate, then lock the frame so a stray thumb can’t nudge it while you work on text.

Step 3 — Apply a template (or don’t)

The fastest route is one tap into Templates — Krevez ships 408 template styles across 13 categories (Framed, Paper, Glass, Analogue and friends), and every element stays editable after you apply one. A template here is a starting point, not a cage. Building from scratch is equally legit: shapes, 200 shape frames, and 38 text-box styles are all in the same gold menu.

Step 4 — Grade every slide in one move

Consistency is what separates “a feed” from “eight photos”. Open Filters, pick a family (Cinematic and Fresh are the crowd-pleasers of the 8 LUT families), and apply it across every slide at once. Non-destructive — toggle it off if you change your mind.

Step 5 — Say less, bigger

Add text with the Text Boxes tool — speech bubbles, captions, even full chat threads with 20 messenger skins. Two rules: minimum 32pt equivalent so it’s readable in the feed, and high contrast over busy photos (that’s what the frames are for).

Step 6 — Export sharp, post clean

Tap export. Krevez renders up to 2160px wide, 2× supersampled — double Instagram’s requirement, which is exactly why it survives their compression without turning to soup. The free tier gives you 2 exports a day, forever, with no watermark. Post the slides in order, write the caption, done — hopefully well before 11:40pm.

Keep the project alive

Your carousel saves as a .krevezfile — one portable, encrypted file with every layer still editable. Next week’s version 2 takes five minutes, not ninety. That, plus what the rest of the studio does, is the whole pitch — and if you’re comparing tools first, the honest numbers are on the comparison page.