Sequence your photos by color flow for a clean Instagram feed. Plain English, no tech-speak.
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. You drag photos around, try different sort modes, 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.
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 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.
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:
Five steps. End-to-end, you'll have a sequenced grid exported and ready to post.
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.
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.
The sidebar on the left has a list of sort modes - Flow, Hue cycle, Light to dark, etc. Click one. The grid re-arranges instantly. Try a few. Flow is the default and usually the best starting point for a varied feed.
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.
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.
Instagram Grid Planner is a single loop:
Select → Render → Arrange → Export
Instagram Grid Planner sequences what you give it - it doesn't search your library. So your selection matters.
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.
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.
Files are named with their upload order: 01_DSC04123.jpg uploads first (lands bottom-right of your feed), 02_... second, and so on. Sort the files by name in Finder and just upload them top-to-bottom. The grid you arranged is the grid you'll see on Instagram.
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:
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.
The sidebar has the controls. Here's what each one does and when to use it.
Each mode rearranges the grid based on a different rule. You can switch freely between them - your manual drag adjustments are kept until you Reset.
Sequences photos so adjacent frames have similar tonal mood. Avoids harsh jumps between cool and warm, light and dark. The sweet spot for a feed that feels coherent without being monotonous.
Walks the color wheel - reds flowing to oranges to yellows to greens to blues to purples and back. Best for sets with strong saturated colors. Looks bold but can feel stagey if your photos are tonally similar.
Sequences from brightest to darkest. Great for moody projects (golden hour to night), or anything that has a natural luminance arc.
Same idea, reversed - dark to bright. Useful when your strongest photo is the brightest one and you want it as the visual destination.
If your selection mixes color and black-and-white photos, this control decides what happens to the B&W ones.
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.
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.
Click Export sequence to open the export dialog. Every option has a sensible default, but here's what each one does.
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.
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.
Output sharpening applied during the export downsize.
Three ways photographers actually use Instagram Grid Planner. Pick the one closest to your situation and follow the shape of it.
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.
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 Hue cycle first - it'll group your work by color and surface anything that drifts tonally (a stretch of mid-summer greens, a brown-heavy fall, a cold-toned winter). Then try 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.
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. Try the B&W mode control - flip between Stack (all B&W together at the bottom of the feed) and Alternate (one B&W per row, threaded through the color sequence). Alternate gives you a steady visual heartbeat; Stack gives you a clean tonal section. Pick the one that fits the body of work. Export, upload in order, done.
localhost:5052?That's the local helper running on your own computer. It's not a public website - nothing leaves your machine. The page just happens to live in your browser because that's the easiest way to drag photos around with a smooth UI.
Yes. Everything happens locally - the Lightroom plugin, the helper, the browser tab, all on your machine. No internet needed.
Yes. Your RAW files are rendered through Lightroom (with your develop edits applied) before they hit the grid - so the colors you arrange match the colors you'll post.
Not yet. The v1 installer is Mac-only. Windows support is on the roadmap if there's enough demand - let us know you'd want it and we'll prioritise accordingly.
200. Above that the rendering takes long enough that the workflow gets clumsy. If you have more, sequence them in batches.
Not across a Lightroom restart in v1. The grid lives in memory while Lightroom is open, and it survives switching between catalogs - so you can keep arranging across multiple catalogs in the same session. About two minutes after you quit Lightroom, the helper exits and the grid is gone. To save the work, export the sequence - the numbered JPEG filenames are the order, and Lightroom keeps your photo selection.
Yes. Build the grid from your first catalog, then switch catalogs (File > Open Catalog) and run the menu again from the second one. You'll be asked whether to Add to grid (appends the new photos to your current sequence), Start new grid (replaces the grid with just the new photos), or Cancel. The browser tab you already have open updates in place either way. Repeat for as many catalogs as you need. Full walkthrough in section 3.5.
Because Instagram does. The newest post in your feed lands top-left and pushes everything else down and right. So the photo you upload first ends up at the bottom. Instagram Grid Planner's numbering matches: 01_ uploads first, lands bottom-right.
Yes. The grid was rendered through Lightroom up front, so your develop adjustments, crop, white balance, and so on are all baked in. Export just resizes that render to the size you pick.
Instagram displays at 1080 px on the long edge. It accepts up to 4096 px and downsamples. The 2048 px option is the practical sweet spot: better than 1080 if Instagram ever shows the high-quality view, much smaller than 4096 to upload.
By default, in ~/Pictures/GridPlanner-exports/<timestamp>/. You can change the destination from the export dialog. Finder opens to the folder when the export finishes.
No. The helper runs on your own machine, and the browser only talks to the helper - never to a remote server. Your photos and metadata stay local. The only network call Instagram Grid Planner makes is to validate your license key.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
The contact form on the home page goes straight to me. Solo developer, personal responses, usually same-day.
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