How to make the “Twitter Photo Tile”

Twitter is a drama-filled hell hole that replaced the reality tv sized hole in our hearts as we all moved away from cable television, but this kind of fun for photographers and other visual artists.

The other night as I was streaming, my moderator, pokismash, sent me a Twitter post from a photographer he follows. It was by Kelsey Smith, a film photographer from Middle Georgia.

As you can see in the post, the photo of the swing ride from the fair is divided up into four quadrants, and when you click into each quadrant, it expands to show two more photos that kind of sandwich the quadrant you have expanded.

When I saw this format, I immediately started reverse-engineering it to help make posts consistently.

TL;DR — A Canva Template

For those who use Canva and want to start figuring it out on their own, feel free to use the template below! After this, I will have more details/instructions if you want more of a step-by-step walkthrough.

Click here to launch the “Twitter Photo Tile” Canva Template.

Key Concept: 16:9

Twitter’s preview crops to a 16:9 aspect ratio, and the Twitter Photo Tile takes advantage of that crop by stacking multiple 16:9 images. To complete this effect, we need nine landscape orientation photos that are all cropped to 16:9. If you want the exact pixel density, its 1214x683, or you can use this template. Choose one photo as your cover, and we can begin arranging.

Arranging The Photos

If you haven’t already, open up the Canva Template or a photo manipulation software of your choice and set the area to 1214 pixels wide and 2048 pixels tall.

I would recommend Canva for this because of how the cropping tool acts and how easy it is to duplicate pages. I also achieved this effect in Google Slides with some extra steps. Let me know in the comments if you want to see me make a separate tutorial for the Google Slides method.

Now that I am in Canva with an appropriately sized canvas, I choose my main photo, which will be divided into quadrants. Once I expand it to full width, I middle justify it to ensure it s smack dab in the middle of the canvas.

For this example, I am using some photos I took of some rappers at the last Ghetto Blstr Cypher @ Lucky Dime in Everett, WA.

Key Concept: Upload Order

It is important to get this out of the way now. When you upload these into your tweet, you will need to upload them in a specific order. That order is:

1. Top Left
2. Top Right
3. Bottom Left
4. Bottom Right

In this example, I take a little bit of a shortcut to save time in Canva. I crop to the Top Left quadrant first, then I do my duplication.

Cropping and Duplicating

This part is the most tedious, especially if you are unfamiliar with Canva but once you get the hang of it it breezes by in no time.

Start by cropping your image to the Top Left quadrant. When you crop in Canva, the solid lines will mean you are at the middle of the document. Since the image is in the middle of the document, you will want to crop until it snaps to the solid lines.

As you can see, Canva also assists us by giving us exact pixel counts to ensure we are cropping the correct amount.

Now that we have our Top Left quadrant cropped exactly where we need it to be for our post, we can click and drag the bottom right corner to expand it to fill in the space.

At this point I do my page duplication. At the top right of the Canva page, there is a ‘Duplicate Page’. Hit that button 3 times to create 4 copies. (Watch out the button moves on you.)

Grid View to demonstrate we have 4 duplicates.

This next step is made very easy by Canva. Click into your second page and then double click the image. It will expand to show you what the uncropped image looks like and you can click and drag to change what is in the cropped area.

All of that image data still there just hiding in plain sight.

Slide your image to the top right quadrant for page 2 like so.

It’ so nice they give you gridlines so you can Rule of Thirds your crop but it doesn’t matter for this project.

Then you can click outside of the image to set the new crop. Repeat this step for Page 3 and the Bottom Left quadrant and Page 4 the Bottom Right quadrant.

Can you see the vision? It’s all coming together.

This next part is easy. Slot in your 8 other photos on the top and bottom negative spaces!

A lot of times I will drag in the uncropped image and then crop to the remaining space. If you have any issues with ordering, you can also right click on an image and select the “Send Backward” and “Bring Forward” options.

Exporting and Tweeting

If you are doing this from a computer like I am, then understand that Canva exports multiple images as a zip folder. Which is annoying but understandable. After you unzip it will be numbered and if you followed the steps earlier, they will be numbered in the correct upload order.

If your preview looks close enough, trust when you post those gaps will shrink to complete the effect. Now all that is left to do is to hit tweet!

Love it when a plan comes together.

Now, I forgot to in this example but it is encouraged to let people know that they should click on the images to expand them. I would also encourage you to make a first comment asking your audience which photo is their favorite. This reinforces the notion that there are multiple photos in your tweet and of course encourages engagement.

Ok but why tho?

Twitter doesn’t have lots of users and it’s mostly a place that breeds internet drama. If you don’t use Twitter, I wouldn’t encourage you to start (unlike every Photography YouTube Channel in 2021) but if you feel compelled to share your photography and you want to include Twitter among the channels in which you share photography, this is a fun and whimsical way to do it. Also, it would mean less drama on your followers timelines and if we can help make that corner of the internet a little less terrible by adding a little more art; then I am all for it.

— virgil.alonso

Author Note

Hey what’s up guys? This is my first post on Medium ever! Hopefully somebody finds it useful. Obviously, its not limited to just photographers who can use this technique but lets keep it to ourselves before the advertisers learn it.

I should mention that I have been able to execute this technique on Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides as well. The fundamentals of the method are the same and as long as you can adjust the slide size, you should be good.

Lastly, I have only tried this with the landscape 16:9 method. There may be other Canva Templates made in the future to accommodate vertical content who knows.

If you found some value out of this Medium Article it would be dope if you could do the following.

1. Tag me in any Tweets you make with this method! I would love to see your photos.
2. Claps are appreciated but if you would like to see more photography content please comment what you would like to see in the comments.
3. To see where else I exist online head to www.photoverge.studio/links for a whole directory. This article was inspired by events that happened during a Twitch stream and it was finished live on Twitch.

Til next time!