How to share panoramic images on Instagram

As you know, Instagram currently does not accept panoramic images.

However, that didn’t stop smart photographers from figuring out how to take advantage of the app’s carousel feature, designed for sharing multiple photos and videos in a single post, to upload gorgeous panoramic images to the service and make their profile awesome.

TUTORIAL: How to share multiple photos and videos in a single Instagram post

When viewed on the web or in the app, such a post results in a seamless, smoothly swipeable panoramic photo. The trick is in turning the source panoramic image into a trio of cropped photos that can be uploaded to Instagram in order to create a carousel-type post.

Here’s one example of a 3×1 panorama-style post.

Of course, the effect is far more impressive inside the Instagram app rather than on the web. On the web, you must click an arrow on either side of the image to advance to the next shot whereas in the app you just swipe horizontally. The effect is quite striking in the app itself—almost as if you’re smoothly panning across one panoramic shot.

How to post panoramic images to Instagram

To save yourself from manual work, we recommend using a dedicated app to share panorama-style shots on Instagram. Such apps automate the whole process so that all that’s left for you to do is upload the individual square shots to Instagram as a multi-image post.

1) Download the app Panols for $1.99 from App Store.

2) Launch Panols on your iPhone or iPad.

3) Tap Allow Photo Access and hit OK to grant Panols permission to access your images.

share panoramic photos on Instagram

4) Panols greets you with thumbnails of all the panoramic images residing in your Photos library (as a reminder, iOS saves panoramic shots you take with your device in a special album titled “Panoramas”). Choose a panoramic photo that you’d like to process with Panols.

5) You’ll now see your selected panoramic image divided into three squares. Pinch to zoom in and out or swipe around in order to align the panorama to the grid the way you like.

6) Tap Export Panol at the bottom.

7) After you see a message confirming that your panoramic shot has been processed and exported to the album “Panols” in your photo library, tap Done and quit the app.

8) Launch Instagram for iPhone.

9) Tap the Plus button centered at the bottom of the screen.

10) Tap Select Multiple (the icon looks like three stacks of paper on top of one another).

11) Select the three square images you just made with Panols from the original panoramic photo, then tap Next to continue. The leftmost side should be selected first, followed by the middle and then the rightmost side. Don’t worry, you’ll notice that the squares in the Panols album are already organized in the order they need to be posted.

12) Optionally, choose a filter for all of your squares at once by tapping one of the filter thumbnails lined up alongside the bottom of the screen. You can apply a different filter to each square image, if you’d like, by tapping the icon in its lower-left corner. Tap Next to continue.

13) Write your caption and/or fill out other metadata that you deem important, then tap Share to upload your final result the same way you’d upload any other Instagram post.

Your followers will see the first image in their feed and can swipe their way to the other squares in the series. For those wondering, you can actually upload up to ten images this way to share as a single carousel-style Instagram post.

Swipe left and right to seamlessly move between the individual square shots

And if you embed your carousel-style Instagram in a blog post, you’ll see something like this.

To swoosh between the individual images, click the arrow on either side.

TIP: Every panol created using the Panols app contains metadata data that you can edit like the image name, description, tags, location and so forth.

You can reposition and re-export your panoramic shots in Panols at any time

As mentioned earlier in this post, the Panols app saves four images in the Camera roll with every conversion: the original panoramic image along with a trio of cropped square shots.

In order to save storage space on your device, you’d be wise to delete these items from the Panols album in Photos after you have uploaded them to Instagram.

Need help? Ask iDB!

If you like this how-to, pass it along to your support folks and leave a comment below.

Got stuck? Not sure how to do certain things on your Apple device? Let us know via help@iDownloadBlog.com and a future tutorial might provide a solution.

Submit your how-to suggestions via tips@iDownloadBlog.com.