A 9 cut splits one photo into nine square tiles that fill three rows of an Instagram profile. Drop your photo into the tool above, adjust where the square crop sits, and export the nine tiles. Post them starting with the bottom right so the picture assembles the right way up.
Drop an image here
or , or paste with Ctrl+V
JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP and AVIF, up to 50 MB.
Drag any line to move a cut. Tab to a line and use the arrow keys to nudge it one pixel, or hold shift for ten.
Vertical cuts give side-by-side pieces. Horizontal cuts stack them.
The tool picks the rows and columns that keep the pieces closest to square.
A shared strip on each seam, so the sheets can be trimmed and taped.
Each piece is resized to the size this page targets before it is saved.
Your image never leaves your device. Splitting runs in your browser with the Canvas API.
The profile grid crops every post to 3:4, so keep the part of each piece you care about away from the left and right edges.
| Instagram profile grid tile | 1080 × 1440 px (3:4) |
|---|---|
| Instagram square post | 1080 × 1080 px (1:1) |
| From a 1080 × 1080 square | 9 pieces of 360 × 360 px |
| From a 1080 × 1350 portrait | 9 pieces of 360 × 360 px, cropped to 1080 × 1080 px first |
| From a 4000 × 3000 photo | 9 pieces of 1000 × 1000 px, cropped to 3000 × 3000 px first |
| Upload order | Piece 9, then 8, then 7, then 6, then 5, then 4, then 3, then 2, then 1 |
The 9 cut is the same nine tiles as a grid post, with a different emphasis. It is a photo trend more than a design exercise: one good picture, cut into nine, posted as a set, usually with a short caption on each tile.
Which means the source matters more than the layout does. A picture with one clear subject and space around it survives being cut into nine. A busy one turns into nine unreadable fragments. Before you export, look at the preview as nine separate squares rather than as one picture, because that is how most people will see it in a feed.
The crop is square, so a rectangular photo loses something. You choose where the square sits: centre, or pulled toward a subject. Then the nine cuts are equal, giving nine tiles from the cropped square.
Posting is the reverse of reading. Bottom right first, top left last, because the newest post takes the top left corner. The tool numbers the files in that order so you can upload straight down the list.
There is one wrinkle worth knowing. Instagram now crops profile thumbnails to 3:4 portrait, so each square tile shows with its top and bottom trimmed in the grid view. Keep the subject in the middle band of each tile and the cut still reads.
Nothing is uploaded.
The standard 9 cut: a portrait, a landscape or an artwork spread across nine posts. Choose a picture with a clear subject and some breathing room, since a busy frame becomes nine fragments. Post all nine in one sitting so nothing shifts the grid before it is finished.
Because each tile is its own post, each one gets its own caption. People use that to tell a story across the set, or to put one line of a longer piece of writing on each tile. Read from bottom right to top left, since that is the order they get posted in.
A date, a name or a launch spread across nine tiles reads at grid size in a way one post never does. Keep type large and centred in each tile, because profile thumbnails are cropped to 3:4 and anything near a tile edge will be cut off.
Most 9 cuts fail on the crop rather than the cut. The preview shows all nine tiles as they will sit in the grid, so you can move the square, drag the interior lines and see immediately whether a face lands on a seam. Re-export as often as you like.
It is one photo cut into nine square tiles and posted as nine separate posts, filling three rows of a profile grid. Seen together the tiles reassemble into the original picture. Seen one at a time in a feed, each tile is a post in its own right.
Crop the photo square, cut it into a 3 by 3 grid, and post the tiles in reverse order. This page does the crop and the cut together and numbers the nine files so the first one you upload is the tile that ends up bottom right.
Bottom right first, then right to left along the bottom row, then the middle row, then the top row, finishing with the top left tile. The newest post always takes the top left position, which is why the order is the reverse of how you read the picture.
Export at 1080 × 1080 px per tile, which is the size Instagram serves feed images at. That means starting from a square source of 1080 pixels or more, so each tile is cropped from real detail rather than upscaled from a small file.
Yes. This page works in mobile Safari and Chrome, and the crop and cut lines respond to touch. iPhone photos saved as HEIC need converting first: in Settings, Camera, Formats, choose Most Compatible so new photos are saved as JPG.
Only until you post again. Every new post shifts the grid one square, so the picture breaks up as soon as anything follows it. Treat a 9 cut as a moment rather than a permanent header, or use a pinned carousel if you need it to last.