How to make a reel from photos: step by step, with music and from a template

When a reel from photos beats a carousel

A carousel and a photo reel can hold the same photos, but they behave differently. In a carousel the viewer swipes and stays on a slide as long as they like. A reel plays by itself, full screen and with sound. So the choice comes down to who sets the pace: you or the viewer.

• A reel wins when the series moves through time: before and after, stages of work, a trip day by day.
• A reel wins when the photos lean on a track or your voice and each frame reads in a second.
• A carousel wins when people need to study an image: a diagram, a menu, a close look at details.
• A carousel wins when the slides carry a lot of text and people read at their own speed.

Take a bakery with ten photos of one cake. The layer-by-layer build suits a reel: slides change with the track and the finished cake lands at the end. A slice with the filling and slides with ingredients and weight suit a carousel, where people study and read them. Photos from one shoot split between both formats, and the formats do not compete.

How to make a reel from photos step by step

Our guide to making a reel on Instagram covers recording and posting. This part covers only what changes when photos replace video.

Pick the photos

Start in the gallery, not in the editor. Instagram Help on reel sizes allows reels with an aspect ratio between 1.91:1 and 9:16 and a minimum resolution of 720 pixels. People watch reels on a vertical screen, so a horizontal photo loses its edges or gets empty bars. Choose vertical photos or images with the subject in the center. One photo carries one idea: the whole cake, a slice, the box. Keep light and color consistent across the series, or every cut will jump in tone.

Work out the number of photos from the reel length. Take a 15-second reel with 1.5 seconds per shot: that makes 10 photos. Pick two or three more than planned and drop the weakest ones in the editor.

1. Tap the create button at the top of the Instagram app, choose a reel and open your gallery.
2. Select the photos. Each one lands on the timeline as a separate clip.
3. Check the framing.
4. Save an unfinished reel as a draft and come back to it later.

Order and duration of each shot

The first shot decides whether people keep watching or swipe away. Open with a photo that reads without text: the product up close, a face, the most striking stage. Save the finished result for the end, like the cake in the example above. The stages go in between, in order.

Each shot gets its own duration on the editing timeline. Instagram Help on recording a reel says the timeline opens when you tap Next, then Edit video in the bottom left. Use the trimmers on each clip to change its length. To move a clip, tap Reorder, drag the clip to a new spot and tap Done.

A photo without text reads fast, so a short display is enough. Give a slide with on-screen text more time: read the text aloud twice and time it. Mix short and long slides, because an even pace makes a series monotonous. With a track, the workflow flips: pick the song first, then time each shot by beats. The next section shows how to count them.

Transitions

The cleanest transition between photos is a straight cut: each slide replaces the previous one with no effect. On a fast rhythm, cuts work best, since effects have no time to finish. A soft transition suits a slow series: landscapes, interiors, portraits. Choose one kind of transition for the whole reel.

How to make a reel with music so photos change on the beat

Our article on music for Reels explains where to get tracks without losing the audio. This part is about rhythm: each photo change lands on a beat. Pick the song and its segment first, then fit the shots.

Shot length follows the tempo, which is measured in beats per minute (bpm). Tap along to the beats for 15 seconds and multiply the count by four. Take a track at 120 beats per minute: two beats per second, one beat every half second.

1. Play the segment and find the first strong beat.
2. Place the first photo change exactly on that beat.
3. Give every shot two or four beats, using the table.
4. On the chorus or a tempo change, cut shots down to one beat.
5. Watch the reel three times in a row and nudge any shot that runs late.

Reels from a template: how to drop your photos into a ready-made rhythm

Here you reuse another creator's reel and fill it with your own photos, so you skip the beat math. On July 18, 2023, the Instagram blog described what carries over into a new reel. The audio, the number of clips, the duration of each clip and AR (augmented reality) effects are added automatically.

The same post lists the edits you can make afterwards. You can add or remove clips, adjust the timing of a single clip and edit any preloaded element. Instagram's Reels feature page says only reels with music and at least three clips can be reused this way.

Instagram Help covers this feature only in the iPhone and Android app. One route starts from a reel you see, as the steps below show. The other goes through the Create menu: tap Create at the top, Reel at the bottom, then Templates. Tap Add media to add your photos in order, and tap a clip, then Replace media, to swap it for another photo.

1. Find a reel whose rhythm fits your series.
2. Tap Template by on that reel, then tap Use template.
3. Drop photos from your gallery into each clip in order.
4. Remove extra clips, add missing ones and adjust their length.
5. Replace someone else's text with your own and check the framing of every photo.

Give a long clip on a slow part of the song to a slide with text, and a short clip on a fast part to a photo without text. You borrow the rhythm, not the footage. The photos, the on-screen text and the caption should be yours.

On-screen text, closed captions and cover

Text on the shots

Without a voiceover, on-screen text does the talking on a photo reel, so it works as the script. According to Instagram Help on recording a reel, you add it with the Text button after tapping Next. On the timeline, tap and hold the text to move it to another slide.

One short line per shot reads more easily than a paragraph. Keep text above the bottom third of the frame: the caption, the account name and the buttons cover the bottom. Our article on reel captions and on-screen text covers what to write.

Closed captions

Closed captions put the spoken words of a reel on screen as text. A photo series set to a track has no speech, so captions have nothing to show. They matter when a voiceover runs over the photos: a product story, work stages, a trip. Turn them on before posting: tap More options at the bottom and switch on Enable closed captions. Instagram Help on closed captions says speech recognition writes them automatically, and Translate closed captions turns on translations. Read the captions in full before posting.

Cover

The cover greets people in your profile grid and decides whether they tap. You set it before posting. After Next, tap Edit cover to select a new cover photo or add one from your device, as Instagram Help on recording a reel describes. The help page on reel sizes recommends a cover of 420 by 654 pixels, a 1:1.55 ratio, as a PNG or JPG. Right now you can't edit the cover after uploading it, so check it before you post.

For a photo reel, the clearest shot in the series with a short headline makes a good cover. Put the headline on that slide or on a separate image ahead of time, near the center and away from the edges. Our guide to reels format, length and cover walks through every requirement for the video, its length and the cover file.

Which photo reels perform in your niche: what the report shows

Our "Reels ideas by topic" report collects reels that already get views on your topic or hashtag. Each one comes with views, saves, reshares, a link and the author. The post caption is included too, so you see how successful creators open the text under a reel.

For a photo reel, the most useful number is duration: it shows how long the popular reels in your niche run. Open the link in any row to see whether a reel was built from photos or shot on video and what you hear in it. Copying a reel does not copy its results: it had its own audience, moment and author.

Our list of 30 reel formats you can shoot on a phone gives you ready-made ideas. Open the reels in your niche roundup to see which of those ideas already get views.

Common questions