It’s that time of year again when you search for your instagram top nine to share – and while the algorithm to pick out said best nine is not something I could do myself ( I used topnine.co as smart phone app), I was not happy about the giant watermark they put all over the grid (and you have to pay to get rid of).
Some other websites offering to analyse your feed either don’t seem to work at all or you need to log in with your instagram account which I don’t really want to to (and besides, what was that password again?).
So today I’m sharing my own template with you for the 3×3 grid, which you can use not only for the best nine, but also for art vs. artist or whatever else you like. Also, feel free to add or change things – I am only offering a staring point.
How to use the action
If you need help installing actions, please take a look here.
I have put some pop up messages (aka “stops”) in the actions that will also let you know about the intended sequence (and that you can delete if they get on your nerves, see this post). But I want to take the opportunity to give you the longer explanation here. Basically, this action is a way to have a tempate ready in seconds without it taking up all the space of a PSD file.
So first, there are 4 actions in the set, and the top one (1) you always have to run first, because it creates just the 3×3 grid on a square blank new canvas (no need to have anything open in Photoshop when you run this). The other three (2a-c) build on that one and will give you a 4:5 canvas (instagram ready) extension either to the top, the bottom or both with a title and a subtitle.
The font I am using is Gotham and you can download it here for free. If you do not have it installed it may give you some warning and (hopefully) substitute the font — if it gives you trouble please let me know and I will update the action with something less nice but super generic… like Arial or some other boring font ^^;
If you want it to be smaller (it is generated at 3000 x 3000 px which is a bit large for instagram), run the actions you want first and then go to Image > Image Size > and scale it o your liking. If you run the three add on actions after you have scaled the initial grid, the actions will look off because the crop will no longer work properly.
And lastly, the layers that are called frame 1 to 9 are Photoshop frames, where you can just drag and drop an image on top of them and you’re all ready to go.
…and finally, the download!
— artwork not included 😉 —
I hope you’ll enjoy this action – if there are any issues, please let me know in the comments!
