Can I put images in a Google Slides table?

No. Table cells in Google Slides only hold text, so a table can't be used as an image grid. Grids of images have to be built from individually positioned pictures, either by hand or with a grid tool like Auto Layout & Grid's.

How do I keep images from stretching in the grid?

Manually, you have to crop each image to the cell's proportions yourself. Auto Layout & Grid's Grid tool fits each image into its cell while preserving its aspect ratio, so nothing gets distorted.

Can I reuse the same grid layout on other slides?

With Auto Layout & Grid, yes: save the columns, rows, gap and margin as a named preset and apply it to any selection later. Presets persist between sessions.

Does the grid work with shapes, text boxes and groups too?

Yes. Any selection can be gridded, not just images. Groups (like a photo grouped with its caption) scale as a unit without distortion, which is the easiest way to grid cards.

How many images can I arrange at once?

Any selection Google Slides can hold. Pick the column and row counts that fit your slide; for large photo sets, a bigger grid with a small gap usually reads better than several separate slides.

How to Make an Image Grid in Google Slides

Image grids are everywhere in real decks: the team slide with twelve headshots, the logo wall, the photo collage from an event, the portfolio page, the before/after comparison. Here are both ways to build one, honestly compared.

First, a Dead End: Tables

The instinct is to insert a table and drop an image into each cell. It doesn't work: Google Slides tables can't contain images. Cells hold text only. A grid of images has to be made of individually positioned objects, which is exactly why it's tedious by hand.

The Manual Way: Guides, Align and Distribute

Turn on guides (View → Guides → Show guides) and add vertical and horizontal guides where your columns and rows should sit.
Resize the first image to your target cell size, then match the others to it one by one (Format options → Size, for each image).
Lay out the first row against the guides, select it, and use Arrange → Distribute → Horizontally to even out the spacing.
Repeat for each row, then select each column and align it, because Distribute only works in one direction at a time.

Why this hurts: distribute is one-dimensional, so a 3×4 grid means handling three rows and four columns separately. Resizing photos of different shapes to one cell size stretches them unless you crop each one by hand. Budget 15 to 30 minutes for a twelve-image grid, and don't add a thirteenth image later.

Verdict: workable for a one-off 2×2. Painful beyond that.

The One-Click Way: Auto Layout & Grid's Grid Tool

Auto Layout & Grid is a layout side panel for Google Slides (alignment, distribution, spacing, sizing), and its Grid tool is built exactly for this job:

Select your images (Shift+click or drag a selection box).
Open Extensions → Auto Layout & Grid → Open panel and go to the Grid tool.
Choose columns, rows, the gap between cells and the outer margin. You can even assign specific objects to specific cells.
Apply. The selection snaps into a clean grid: images keep their aspect ratio instead of being stretched into the cell, and groups scale without distortion.
Save the configuration as a preset and reuse it on the next slide, or next month's version of the deck.

Verdict: the twelve-headshot slide takes about a minute, and adding a thirteenth image later means re-running the grid, not rebuilding it.

The first use of each Auto Layout & Grid action is free, so you can build one real grid before paying anything; a one-time unlock gets you everything for life.

Grid Ideas That Work Well in Slides

Team slide: uniform headshot grid, one gap value everywhere; group each photo with its name caption and grid the groups.
Logo wall: partner or client logos in a wide grid with generous margins; aspect-ratio preservation matters most here.
Photo collage or moodboard: mixed-format photos in a tight-gap grid.
Before/after pairs: a 2-column grid with a large gap between the columns.
Portfolio or product gallery: screenshots in a 3×2 grid, re-run whenever a screenshot changes.

If your grid problem is really an alignment problem (a row of icons, evenly spaced cards), start with our guide on aligning and distributing objects in Google Slides.