Instagram Grid Planner - Setup & Usage Guide

1. Before you start

What Instagram Grid Planner does

Instagram Grid Planner takes the photos you've selected in Lightroom and arranges them into a 3-up grid - the same shape an Instagram profile uses - sequenced so the colors and tones flow naturally from one frame to the next. Each tile is shown in Instagram's current 3:4 (portrait) crop, so the preview matches how your feed actually looks today. You drag photos around, try different sort modes, group photos into carousel posts, and when it looks right you export the whole sequence as numbered JPEGs ready to upload.

The arranging happens in your browser. Lightroom hands the photos to a small local helper, the helper renders them with your edits applied, and a webpage opens where you sequence everything visually. Nothing leaves your computer.

What you need

• macOS - Instagram Grid Planner's v1 installer is Mac-only. Windows support is coming if there's demand.
• Adobe Lightroom Classic. The cloud-based "Lightroom" (previously Lightroom CC) is not supported.
• A modern browser - Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Arc, or Edge all work fine.
• The two folders you got from your download - grid-planner.lrplugin and grid-planner-server - need to sit in the same parent folder. The plugin looks for the server next to itself.

The first launch - what to expect

The first time you run Instagram Grid Planner, Lightroom opens a browser tab at http://localhost:5052. That's the local helper running on your own machine - the URL just looks plain because nothing public is involved. The grid loads, your photos appear, and you can start arranging.

If your photos are RAW, the first render may take a minute or two: Lightroom is generating an edited preview of each photo so the grid reflects your actual edits, not the raw file.

Activating your license

Instagram Grid Planner ships with three menu items under Library > Plug-in Extras. The main one is Open Instagram Grid Planner - that's the one you'll use every time. The other two handle licensing:

• Activate License... - the first time you run the plugin, you'll be asked for a license key. Paste the key from your order email, click Activate, and you're set. You only do this once per Mac.
• Deactivate License - frees up your license so you can use it on a different Mac. Run this on the old machine before activating on a new one. Your license covers a single active install at a time.

2. Easy start - your first 5 minutes

Five steps. End-to-end, you'll have a sequenced grid exported and ready to post.

Step 1 - Pick the photos for your next post or feed

Select between 9 and 30 photos in Lightroom's Library view. A typical Instagram drop is 9 (one row visible at the top of your feed) or 18-30 (a deeper feed plan). Instagram Grid Planner works with up to 200 photos, but the sweet spot is the size of an actual feed plan.

Step 2 - Run Instagram Grid Planner

Go to Library > Plug-in Extras > Open Instagram Grid Planner. A progress bar appears titled "Instagram Grid Planner: rendering with Lightroom edits...", and once the rendering finishes, your default browser opens with the grid loaded.

Step 3 - Try a sort mode

The sidebar on the left has three sort modes - Smooth Flow, Cluster, and Hue Wheel. Click one. The grid re-arranges instantly. Try each. Smooth Flow is the default and usually the best starting point for a varied feed.

Step 4 - Drag to fine-tune

Sort modes get you 80% of the way there. The last 20% is taste. Click and drag any photo to a new spot - everything re-flows around it. Move two photos that look too similar apart. Pull a strong color frame to a corner. Trust your eye.

Step 5 - Export the sequence

Click Export sequence at the top right. A dialog appears with size, quality, and sharpening options - sensible defaults are pre-selected. Pick the destination folder, click Start export, and the rendered JPEGs land in a timestamped subfolder, numbered in posting order. Finder opens automatically when the export finishes.

That's it. Upload the numbered files to Instagram in order and your feed lands in the layout you arranged.

3. The full workflow - Select, Render, Arrange, Export

Instagram Grid Planner is a single loop:

Select → Render → Arrange → Export

3.1 Select - what to pick

Instagram Grid Planner sequences what you give it - it doesn't search your library. So your selection matters.

• For a single post (3-9 photos): pick what you'd post anyway. Instagram Grid Planner will tell you the best order.
• For a feed plan (18-30 photos): pick the next month or so of intended posts. Instagram Grid Planner will tell you the order they should appear in your grid.
• For an audit (50+ photos): pick a chunk of recent work to see how it would look as a feed. Useful when you're considering a tonal shift in your style.

3.1a Smart Pick - let the plugin choose from a whole shoot

Sometimes you don't want to choose. You have a session of 500 frames and you want a nine-photo grid out of it in a minute. Open the folder or collection in Lightroom (select nothing, or select the photos you want considered) and go to Library > Plug-in Extras > Smart Pick.

A small dialog asks how many photos you want, and offers two settings:

• Skip frames shot within ... of each other. On by default at one minute, so a burst of ten near-identical frames can only contribute one. Type any number and pick seconds, minutes or hours - one minute suits most shoots, a few hours suits a day-long trip where you want variety.
• Rejected photos are never picked, and soft or blown-out frames are left out as long as enough photos remain. Star ratings are ignored: to choose from your 4-5 star photos only, filter the view in Lightroom before you run it.

Smart Pick reads the previews Lightroom already has instead of rendering every photo, so a few hundred frames take under a minute. Only the chosen photos are then rendered through your edits and opened as a normal grid - sort it, drag it, remove a tile with its × and use Add to grid to bring in a replacement, then export as usual. If you ask for more photos than can pass your time gap, it tells you how many it found and continues with those.

3.2 Render - what happens behind the scenes

When you run the menu item, Lightroom exports each selected photo as a 4096-pixel sRGB JPEG into a temp folder, with all your develop edits applied. The local helper reads those edited JPEGs to extract dominant colors and to build the thumbnails you see in the grid.

This step is what makes the sequencing accurate. A hand-edited B&W shot is treated as B&W; a heavily cropped photo is sequenced based on the cropped frame, not the original. The render only happens once per Instagram Grid Planner session - re-arranging is instant.

3.3 Arrange - the part that matters

The grid in your browser is the actual product. A sort mode is a starting point; drag-and-drop is how you finish. See the Arrange controls section below for what every setting does.

The grid is read right-to-left, bottom-up - matching how Instagram shows posts (newest in the top-left). The first photo you'll upload is the bottom-right; the last photo is the top-left.

3.4 Export - what comes out

Files are named with their upload order: 01_DSC04123.jpg uploads first (lands bottom-right of your feed), 02_... second, and so on. A carousel post's photos share its number with a slide suffix - 07-1_, 07-2_, 07-3_ - so each post's slides stay together and in cover-first order. A photo spread across tiles comes out as separate files, one per tile - 12_DSC04123_slice1of3.jpg, 11_..._slice2of3.jpg and so on - each with its own upload number. Sort the files by name in Finder and upload them top-to-bottom (selecting all of a carousel's slides for that one post). By default every file is cropped to the 3:4 tile exactly as you framed it, so the grid you arranged is the grid you'll see on Instagram.

3.5 Combine multiple catalogs into one grid

A feed plan often spans more than one Lightroom catalog - one per client, year, or shoot. Instagram Grid Planner can fold them into a single grid without losing your work in between:

1. Start in your first catalog. Select photos, run the menu, build the grid as usual.
2. Switch to another catalog (File > Open Catalog) - Lightroom reloads, but the grid you built stays in memory.
3. Select more photos in the new catalog and run the menu again. A dialog appears with three choices:
   • Add to grid appends the new photos to your existing sequence. Your current arrangement stays; the new photos land at the end so you can drag or re-sort them where you want.
   • Start new grid replaces the existing grid with just the new photos. The browser tab you already have open refreshes in place - no second tab to manage.
   • Cancel backs out without doing anything.
4. The same works within one catalog: open any other collection or folder, select the photo or photos you want, run the menu and choose Add to grid. If exactly one photo is selected, the plugin first asks whether you mean that one photo or everything in the view.

The grid lives in memory until about two minutes after you quit Lightroom. If you need to keep it longer, export the sequence first - the numbered JPEGs are the saved record.

4. Arrange controls, explained

The sidebar has the controls. Here's what each one does and when to use it.

Sort modes

Three modes, each rearranging the grid by a different rule. Switch freely between them - your manual drag adjustments and carousels are kept until you Reset. (Keyboard: press 1, 2, or 3.)

Smooth Flow (default)

Each photo melts into the next, the color drifting gently from one frame to its neighbour. The sweet spot for a calm, coherent feed that still has variety - like a sunset slowly turning into night.

Cluster

Groups photos by color family - warm tones together, then greens, then blues - like sorting prints into piles on a lightbox. Reach for it when your set has clear themes and you want each one to feel like its own little section.

Hue Wheel

Walks all the way around the color wheel - reds to oranges, through yellows, greens, blues and purples, back to red. Best for a varied set where you want a bold, graphic feed that the colors carry.

Centre accents

A sidebar toggle, on by default. When it's on, Instagram Grid Planner looks at each row of three and moves the odd-one-out - a black-and-white frame, or a photo whose color clearly stands apart - into the middle of the row, giving every row a natural focal point. Turn it off and those standout photos are grouped together instead of threaded through. If a sort finds no clear odd-one-out in a row, the toggle simply has nothing to do there.

Carousels - group photos into one post

A carousel is a single Instagram post that holds several photos you swipe through. You build them right in the grid, and only the cover shows in your feed layout.

To make one: click a tile to select it, then Shift-click another to grab everything in between, or hold ⌘ (Cmd) to add tiles one at a time. With two or more selected, click Group into carousel in the bar at the bottom (or press G). The tiles collapse into a single tile with a small stack badge and a slide count.

To edit one: hover the carousel tile and click the expand button, or double-click it. A panel opens showing every slide:

• Drag slides to reorder them. Slide 1 is the cover - the photo that shows in your feed.
• Make cover promotes any slide to the front.
• The × on a slide pops it back into the grid as its own post - nothing is deleted.
• Ungroup all dissolves the carousel back into separate tiles.

A carousel holds up to 20 photos - Instagram's current limit. To take one apart from the grid without opening it, select the tile and click Ungroup (or press U).

Design a carousel - one strip across every slide

A designed carousel is laid out as one long strip and then cut into slides, so a photo can run from one slide into the next, the following photo can peek in at the edge, and white borders can hold portraits and landscapes together. It is the look that usually takes Photoshop or Canva.

To make one: select the photos (2 to 20), then click Design carousel in the bar at the bottom. They are grouped and a finished design appears straight away - the layout that crops your photos least. With a single photo selected you get the panorama layouts. You can also open a carousel you already made and click Design….

Pick a layout. The wall of layouts is drawn with your own photos, so what you see is what you get. Each one says how many slides it makes and how much it crops:

• No crop - gallery rows on a border. Your photos keep their full shape, whatever mix of portrait and landscape.
• Seamless - photos cross from slide to slide: landscapes over two slides, the next photo peeking in, film strips, brickwork.
• Panorama - one photo over 2 to 5 slides, with or without the whole photo first.
• Collage - one to six photos on every slide.

The red dashed lines in the big preview are where one slide ends and the next begins - keep faces off them. Choose the slide shape (3:4 matches your grid, 4:5, 1:1), the Border and the background Colour; your last choice is remembered for the next carousel.

Frame each photo. In the big preview, drag a photo to move it inside its frame. Click it to get a Zoom slider (or pinch on a trackpad), and double-click to put it back. Drag the small numbered photos to change their order.

Photo order. By default the planner may swap two photos when that saves a lot of cropping - a landscape that landed in a tall frame, say. Choose Keep my order if the sequence matters more; reordering the small photos yourself switches to it for you.

Preview swipe shows the carousel one slide at a time in a phone-sized frame, the way it will swipe on Instagram. Hide preview folds the big preview away to leave more room for layouts. Remove design turns it back into a plain carousel.

In the grid, a designed carousel shows its first slide and the number of slides. Double-click it to open the designer again. On export it comes out as finished slides (07-1_carousel.jpg, 07-2_carousel.jpg…), numbered in upload order with everything else. Ungrouping a carousel removes its design.

Adjust the crop - choose what shows in the tile

Instagram shows every post in a tall 3:4 tile and always picks the middle. For a landscape that means the sides go; for a tall portrait, the top and bottom. The planner shows that same crop, but lets you decide where it sits.

To adjust: hover any tile and click the small grid button in its bottom-left corner (or select the tile and press C). A panel opens with the photo inside a 3:4 frame. Drag the photo left and right (or up and down for a tall one), use the slider underneath, or nudge with the arrow keys. Centre puts it back in the middle. The tile in the grid updates as you move, and the export uses exactly this framing.

A photo that is already 3:4 has nothing to slide - the panel still opens so you can spread it across tiles (below). Your choices are remembered for that grid, even if you close the tab and come back.

Spread one photo across several tiles

The same panel has a Tiles row: 1 (a normal post), 2, 3, 4, 6 or 9. Pick a number and the photo takes that many slots in the grid as one block - a row of three for a panorama, a 3×2 block, or the full 3×3 screen for a hero shot. The frame changes shape to match and shows the lines where the photo will be cut; drag it until the cuts fall where you want them.

• 3, 6 and 9 take full rows. 2 and 4 take two columns, so another photo sits beside them in the third column.
• The block moves as one: drag any of its tiles to move the whole thing. It snaps to a spot where it fits without breaking across rows.
• Sort modes leave split photos where they are and re-sort everything else around them.
• The × on any tile of a block removes the whole photo from the grid; set it back to 1 tile in the panel to make it a normal post again.
• A block can't join a carousel, and a photo inside a carousel can't be split - set it back to a single post first.

If a 2- or 4-tile block leaves an empty slot beside it (a dashed tile), drag a photo into it or add more photos before exporting. Instagram fills every slot in order, so an empty one would shift everything after it - the export waits until the grid is full.

On export each tile becomes its own file, cut from the full-resolution render and numbered in upload order. Post them one after the other and the picture reassembles on your profile.

Images and posts

The top of the sidebar shows two live counts: Images (how many photos are in the grid) and Posts (how many feed tiles that makes - a carousel counts as one, a photo spread across three tiles counts as three). A quick sanity check for a feed plan: 24 images across 18 posts means six of them are carousels.

Reset

Returns the grid to "as loaded" order - the order Lightroom gave us, which is whatever order the photos were selected in. Useful if you've drag-rearranged a lot and want to start over.

Grid size slider

Scales just the grid - not the rest of the page - between 50% and 100%. Smaller is useful for fitting a longer feed (30+ photos) on one screen. Bigger is useful for fine-tuning a tight 9-photo grid.

5. Export options

Click Export sequence to open the export dialog. Every option has a sensible default, but here's what each one does.

Save to

Where the exported folder will land. Defaults to ~/Pictures/GridPlanner-exports. Click Change to pick a different folder. A timestamped subfolder is always created inside whatever you pick - so repeat exports never overwrite each other.

Long edge

• 1080 px - Instagram exact. The size Instagram displays at. Smallest files, fastest upload.
• 2048 px - Instagram max. The largest size Instagram keeps before downsampling. Good middle ground.
• 4096 px - High quality. For posts where you want maximum detail (Instagram does keep some 4096 px detail in the high-quality view).
• Original (up to 4096 px). Full size of the rendered preview, capped at 4096.

Quality

JPEG compression. The default of 85 is what most people should use. Below 70 the compression artefacts start to be visible on smooth gradients (skin, sky); above 90 file sizes balloon for negligible visible gain.

Crop to grid

On by default, and recommended. Every photo is exported as the 3:4 tile you see in the grid, using the framing you chose in the crop panel (centred if you didn't touch it), so the feed you planned is the feed people get. Photos spread across tiles are always cut into their slices, whether this is on or off.

Turn it off to export each photo in its original Lightroom shape and let Instagram crop on its end - useful if you post the photo full-size and only care about the grid preview.

No crop

Only applies when Crop to grid is off. Instagram shows a feed post uncropped between 4:5 (portrait) and 1.91:1 (landscape); anything taller or wider gets trimmed at upload. Choose white, black or blur to pad those photos onto a canvas inside that range instead. Photos already in range are left exactly as they are, so nobody gets bars they didn't need.

Sharpen

Output sharpening applied during the export downsize.

• None - rare; only if you've already sharpened heavily in Develop and don't want more.
• Light - subtle.
• Standard (default) - what most photos benefit from after a downsize for screen.

6. Tips for the best feeds

• Three good photos beat ten okay ones. A feed that's edited tightly always reads better than a long sequence of average work.
• Use Flow first, drag second. Don't try every sort mode before touching anything. Pick Flow, then move the 2 or 3 frames that don't feel right. You'll get there faster.
• Watch your edges. The bottom-right photo is the first thing a new visitor sees - make it strong. The top-left will scroll off as you keep posting; less critical.
• Avoid two near-identical frames in a row. Two close-up portraits, two wide landscapes, two photos of the same subject. Instagram Grid Planner sees colors, not subjects, so this is the part where your eye does the work.
• Plan in chunks of 9. Three rows is what people see when they land on your profile. If you can make every group of 9 stand on its own, you've already won.
• One bold photo per row. Turn on Centre accents (or just drag manually) to give each row a focal point.
• Group a series into one post. Three shots of the same moment, a before/after - stack them into a carousel so they read as a set instead of competing for grid space.
• Let Smart Pick take the first cut. On a big shoot, ask it for 12, drop the three you like least, and sort. Choosing from twelve is quick; choosing from five hundred is the part that never gets done.
• Frame the crop before you judge the order. A landscape cut at the middle can look like a different photo. Slide it to the part that matters first, then decide where it goes in the sequence.
• One banner per screen, at most. A panorama across a row of three is a strong break in a feed; a 3×3 block is a full screen. Use them sparingly, and keep single posts strong on their own since the block scrolls off as you keep posting.
• Export at 2048 unless you have a reason not to. Bigger is mostly wasted upload time; smaller compresses too aggressively.

7. Real-world scenarios

Three ways photographers actually use Instagram Grid Planner. Pick the one closest to your situation and follow the shape of it.

Wedding photographer - 30-photo highlight grid for a client

You've just delivered a wedding gallery and want to give the couple a feed-ready preview of their best 30 photos - laid out the way it'll look on their Instagram profile when they post over the next month.

Select the 30 strongest frames in Lightroom. Run Open Instagram Grid Planner. Let Flow do the first pass - it usually nails the overall tonal arc. Then walk the bottom row (the first three photos that'll go up): make sure they're your strongest, since those are what wedding website visitors will see first. Drag any two near-identical hugs or kisses apart so they don't stack in the same row. Export at 2048 px, drop the numbered files in a Dropbox folder, and send the couple the link. They upload in order, the feed lands as planned.

Travel hobbyist - auditing a year of work

You shot for a year, edited as you went, but never stepped back to look at the body of work as a whole. You want to know: does my style hang together?

Select 60-90 of your favourites from the year. Run the plugin. Try Cluster first - it groups your work by color and surfaces anything that drifts tonally (a stretch of mid-summer greens, a brown-heavy fall, a cold-toned winter). Then try Smooth Flow to see how the year reads as a continuous arc. You don't need to export - this is a visual audit, not a posting plan. Close the tab when you've seen what you came to see. The next time you shoot, you'll know which palettes you over-rely on.

Portrait photographer - mixing B&W and color in one feed

You shoot a roughly 50/50 mix of black-and-white and color portraits, and your Instagram feed has been a mess of unintentional clustering. You want a deliberate rhythm.

Select 18 portraits (six rows). Run the plugin. Use the Centre accents toggle - on, it threads your black-and-white frames through the feed as one-per-row accents; off, it groups them together as a clean tonal section at the bottom. Accents give you a steady visual heartbeat; grouping gives you a deliberate black-and-white block. Pick the one that fits the body of work. Export, upload in order, done.

8. Frequently asked questions

Setup

Arranging

Exporting

Privacy

9. Troubleshooting

The browser opens but the grid doesn't load

The local helper isn't running. Quit Lightroom (⌘Q), reopen it, and run the menu item again - the helper starts automatically when you trigger Instagram Grid Planner.

If it persists, check that the grid-planner-server folder is sitting next to grid-planner.lrplugin in the same parent folder. If it isn't, move it there.

"Could not render any of the selected photos"

Either the source files aren't on disk (external drive unplugged, files moved) or Lightroom couldn't read them. Make sure the photos show their actual previews in Lightroom - if you only see Smart Previews or "Photo is missing" warnings, reconnect the files first.

Rendering takes forever for RAW files

Rendering RAW files through Lightroom takes about 1-2 seconds per photo. A 60-photo selection of RAW files takes around 90 seconds. This only happens once per Instagram Grid Planner session - re-arranging is instant after that.

If you want it faster: select fewer photos, or pre-export your edits to JPEG and run Instagram Grid Planner on the JPEGs.

The browser shows old thumbnails

Force a refresh: ⌘Shift+R in Safari/Chrome, Ctrl+F5 elsewhere. The browser sometimes caches thumbnails between sessions. If that doesn't fix it, close the tab and re-run the menu item to start a fresh session.

Drag-and-drop doesn't work

Make sure you're dragging from the photo itself, not from the empty space around it. Hold the click for a beat before you start moving - some browsers wait to confirm it's a drag and not a click.

"Address localhost:5052 refused to connect"

The helper crashed or didn't start. Quit Lightroom and reopen it. If it persists, open grid-planner-server/server.log next to the plugin folder - the last few lines usually say what went wrong. Use the contact form with the log if the message isn't clear.

Still stuck? Need help?

Email [email protected] - a real person reads every message and replies, usually within a day. No question is too small.

You can also use the contact form on the home page - it goes straight to me. Solo developer, personal responses, usually same-day.