How to Make a Set of Image Cards

Why Card Images Deserve Separate Attention

Image-first feeds show the title and the first card together, and a reader spends seconds on a feed card. If the first image does not pull, the content is never seen — however good the rest of the copy is.

The more practical problem is the cost of making them by hand. Producing a five-card set in a design tool — canvas, text placement, font sizes, export — is acceptable once or twice and hard to sustain as a routine. Writing the content in Markdown and generating the set in bulk compresses this to a few minutes.

Generation is only the last step, though. Whether the cards look right is mostly decided during writing. If the split is wrong, the tool faithfully turns the mistake into pictures.

How to Split Content Across Cards

The first card carries the hook

The fewer words on the first card, the better — usually one sentence plus a few words. It has a single job: give a reason to tap in. Do not complete the conclusion there; keep the conclusion for the later cards, because that is what makes people keep swiping.

One thing per card

Each card is one section: a title sentence plus two or three lines. Four points crammed into one card get one glance and then a swipe away; one card per point, with page numbers, holds a steady reading pace.

End with a concrete next step

Put an explicit next action on the last card: follow, save, or a question back. Do not write "thanks for reading" — that offers no reason to act, and most readers will not decide anything for themselves.

The Production Flow

Write the content as Markdown following the structure above and paste it into Markdown to Image Cards. The tool provides a three-step wizard that takes you from input straight to generation.

1. 1Write each section as an independent block, with the leading sentence as the card title.
2. 2Use Markdown image syntax where a picture is needed; images are embedded into the card.
3. 3Set the card theme colour, which is applied across the whole set.
4. 4Turn on page numbers so the cards are numbered in order.
5. 5Export the set as PNG in one batch.

No login is needed at any point, and both the input and the export happen locally without a server in between.

Theme Colour and Page Numbers

Pick the account colour for the theme rather than a default. A set of cards is seen as a sequence, and a consistent colour makes it read as one design rather than a few unrelated pictures. Changing the colour is cheap, and the benefit compounds across the whole set.

• Turn page numbers on: they establish sequence, so the reader knows which card they are on and how many are left.
• Embedded images change card height — read through once before exporting to confirm nothing is clipped.
• Keep theme colour and font size identical within a set, and only change them between sets.

The Two Checks to Do Before Publishing

Is the first card readable at feed size?

The first card is scaled down hard in the feed. Shrink the exported image to feed size and look at it: if the line is illegible or all that remains is a background colour, the first card needs redoing — shorten the text, increase the size, simplify the background. This has to be done by eye; a preview panel will not show it.

Are the files too large?

A set of full-size originals can be several megabytes each and will upload slowly. Batch-compress them first with Image Compressor. For how far to compress and with which format, see PNG, JPG or WebP: Which Format and How Much Compression.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the export resolution sufficient?

Exports are PNG at the card canvas pixel size, which is enough for both feed and detail views. If you need a larger size for further editing, increase the canvas size in the settings before exporting.

What happens when the text is too long?

Card height grows with the content — long text stretches the card rather than being clipped. But an over-long card is cramped when previewed in the feed, so keep to one point per card.

How many cards can I make?

There is no limit on the number; cards are generated per section. The publishing platform caps the images per post and anything beyond the cap is not shown, so decide the count before writing rather than cutting after.

Do I need an account? Is my content uploaded?

No account needed. Parsing, layout and export all happen locally in the browser; nothing is sent to a server.

Summary

Treat the cards as short, ordered content rather than one article chopped into pictures. Structure them as hook, body, closing; build the sense of a set with a consistent theme colour and page numbers; then batch-export to keep the cost down.

If the cards need imagery, add a consistent border with Add Borders to Images to keep the set visually unified. For layout workflow, see Article Layout: From Markdown to a Ready-to-Publish Draft.