How to Make a Seamless Instagram Carousel in Adobe Illustrator (Step-by-Step Tutorial)
✨ Want to stop your carousel posts from looking clunky and start making scroll-worthy designs that actually flow? In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through my foolproof method for creating seamless Instagram carousels using Adobe Illustrator.
Prefer to watch the process instead?
You can catch the full tutorial on YouTube here:
✨ Why Seamless Carousels Matter for Your Creative Brand
You know those carousels that flow perfectly from one slide to the next? The ones where the artwork glides across the screen like magic?
Yeah — that’s not an accident.
Creating a seamless carousel helps your content feel more polished, engaging, and memorable. Whether you’re sharing tips, showing off your art, or telling a story, this format keeps people swiping… and that boosts your reach and your connection with your audience.
The best part? You don’t need fancy tools or advanced tech skills. Just a little Adobe Illustrator magic and the right artboard settings.
🖥️ How to Set Up Your Artboards in Illustrator
We’re keeping things simple and beginner-friendly, so let’s start from the top:
Open Adobe Illustrator and create a new document.
Set the dimensions to 1080px x 1350px — that’s the standard Instagram vertical post size.
Choose how many slides you want in your carousel (aka, the number of artboards).
For this example, I used 4 slides, but you can scale it up!
Turn off bleed, and under Advanced Settings:
Set the color mode to RGB (perfect for screen use).
Set raster effects to High for a crisp export.
Once your document is created:
Hit Shift+O to access the Artboard tool.
Click “Rearrange All” and set the spacing to 0px — this ensures your artboards line up in one straight row with no gaps. 👉 This part is crucial — it’s what makes your carousel seamless after you export it.
✏️ Adding Your Artwork and Design Elements
Once your artboards are lined up:
Import your artwork — whether it's vectorized art from Procreate, illustrations, or patterns.
Use layers wisely — I love locking my background layer so I don’t accidentally move it around while designing.
Play with placement - elements that start on one slide and continue onto the next will create that beautiful, flowing carousel effect.
💡 Pro Tip: I often import my brand color palette as a Procreate swatch image and paste it into Illustrator so I can colour-match everything with the eye-dropper tool.
📲 Exporting Your Carousel (The Right Way!)
Here’s how to export everything so that you get that PERFECT seamless swipe:
Go to File > Export > Export for Screens
Select All Artboards
Choose PNG (for crisp quality) or JPEG
Keep the scale at 1x
Export to your Downloads or a folder you can easily find
Airdrop or upload the images to your phone
Once they’re in your camera roll, upload them to Instagram as a carousel — and watch the perfect seamless swipe magic happen.
🪄 Everything will line up perfectly, with no cropping errors or misaligned edges.
🧠 Extra Tips for Carousel Success
Think about the flow - Carousels are mini-stories — whether it’s an art process, quote collection, or product lookbook, design it with narrative in mind, something that will keep people swiping forward.
Think about the action you want viewers to take - is the aim to promote a product? Remind them to visit your website or add a discount they can use. Is the goal to connect with new audiences and grow your community? Prompt people to save or follow for more.
💬 Ready to Try It?
Let me know in the comments or on Instagram if you give this method a go — I’d love to see what you create!
And if you’re building your creative brand and want more behind-the-scenes tutorials like this, be sure to check out my YouTube channel or join my newsletter for more tips, updates, and exclusive freebies ⬇️
