How to put two photos side by side in one picture

You photographed the bathroom wall before and after the tiler finished, and you want to send both to the family chat. Or an office asked for the front and back of your driving licence as a single image. Send the two photos separately and they drift apart in the chat, someone else's message lands in between, and the person on the other end mixes up which came first. Putting both frames into one picture solves all three problems at once.

The merging itself takes a minute; the real decisions come before it. Should the frames sit side by side or one above the other, which one shrinks if their sizes differ, and should there be a line between them? This guide walks through those choices in order. If what you actually need is a stack of photos laid out on printable pages, that is a different job, covered in our guide to combining several photos into one PDF.

Side by side or stacked? The shape of the photos decides

The deciding factor is not taste but the recipient's screen. Whatever you send is squeezed into a box on their phone; a very wide or very tall image only fits by shrinking, and detail disappears. What you are aiming for is a result that comes out close to a square.

The rule is short: put two portrait photos side by side, and stack two landscape photos one above the other. An example: two portrait phone photos of 3000×4000 pixels placed side by side give a 6000×4000 image, slightly wider than tall. Stack the same pair and you get a 3000×8000 strip, nearly three times as tall as it is wide; on a phone screen both frames end up the size of a postage stamp.

You do not need to remember how you held the phone. Look at the thumbnail in your gallery: if it is taller than it is wide, it is a portrait photo.

Which pair, which layout?

The table lists the pairs people run into most often. The sizes are examples, calculated on the assumption that both photos are the same size and no gap is added.

Photos of different sizes: which one shrinks?

Say the before photo reached you by message three years ago and is 1600 pixels tall, while the after photo comes from your new phone at 4000 pixels. When the Merge Photos tool places them side by side, it matches their heights, and it always does so towards the smaller one: the result is 1600 pixels tall and the new photo is brought down to that height.

That looks like a loss at first, but for a comparison it is the right call. The opposite would blow the old photo up artificially; the before half would look soft, the after half sharp, and the comparison would be unfair before anyone looked at what changed. When both frames carry the same level of detail, the eye goes straight to the difference.

Matching heights does not change proportions. If one photo was taken at 4:3 and the other at 16:9, one will look narrow and the other wide next to each other. To get two halves of equal width, bring both to the same ratio in the Crop Image tool before merging; picking, say, 3:4 for both is enough. Because cropping keeps the middle of the frame, it works best when the subject is centred.

Making a before-and-after shot convincing

A comparison is only worth something if the change you are showing is the one difference between the two frames. Take the second photo from where you stood for the first, at the same distance and, if you can, at the same time of day. Keep something fixed in the frame, such as a door frame, a socket or a window; the viewer lines the two pictures up against it.

Order carries meaning too. The eye reads left to right and top to bottom, so the before frame belongs on the left or on top. The tool lays photos out in list order, and each new selection is added to the end of the list, so pick the two photos one at a time, the before photo first.

If you want BEFORE and AFTER written on the pictures, the merge tool will not do it. Before merging, you can stamp a single word on each photo with the Add a Watermark tool: choose bottom left and raise the opacity so the word reads clearly. If that feels like too much work, a line in the message itself, "before on the left, after on the right", does the job.

Should there be a gap between them?

A gap shows where one frame ends and the other begins. For a before-and-after pair, which shows two separate moments, a thin white line guides the eye. If you are rebuilding a screenshot captured in pieces, you want no gap at all, because the text has to run on without a break.

The gap is set in pixels, and how it looks depends on the size of the result: 20 pixels is a hairline on a 4000-pixel image and a thick band on an 800-pixel one. A practical measure is about one per cent of the height of the smallest photo: 16 pixels for a frame 1600 pixels tall, 40 pixels for one of 4000.

The colour of the gap follows the output format: white with JPG, transparent with PNG. For a picture you are sending by message, choose JPG; not every app shows a transparent area in the same colour.

Sending it on WhatsApp as a single picture

The merged picture is saved to your device as birlesik.jpg. On Android it goes to the Downloads folder; on an iPhone, to the Downloads section of the Files app. If it does not appear in your gallery straight away, look there.

When you tap the paperclip in WhatsApp you get two routes. A picture sent through Gallery or Photos is compressed again by the app; for a landscape or a face nobody notices, but small print such as a licence number or an invoice line can blur. Choose Document in the same menu and the file travels exactly as it is; the other person sees it as a file to tap and open rather than as a photo in the chat.

One more benefit: because the tool draws the merged picture from scratch, it does not carry the location and camera details hidden inside the original photos. Even sent as a document, it will not hand your home's coordinates to the recipient.

The reverse: splitting one picture in two

Sometimes the job runs the other way. Someone sent you two documents squeezed into one photo, but a form wants each one uploaded into its own box. In the Split Image tool, either of the two-piece options cuts the picture exactly down the middle, and neither half is resized, so nothing is lost.

The cut always runs through the exact centre. If the two documents do not each fill precisely half of the picture, one piece will show the edge of the other; crop each piece afterwards to tidy it up.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to install an app to put two photos side by side?

No. The Merge Photos tool runs in your browser; on a phone or a computer, open the page and pick the two photos. They never leave your device and are not uploaded to any server.

Which photo ends up on the left?

The first one in the list. In a stacked layout the first one goes on top. If the order comes out wrong, remove both files from the list and pick the photos again one at a time: each new selection is added to the end.

Can I merge four photos into a 2×2 grid?

The tool lines photos up in a single row or a single column, not a grid. For a grid, work in two passes: first merge the photos in pairs side by side, then stack the two results.

Does merging reduce quality?

The larger photo is brought down to the height of the smaller one, so it loses pixels; on screen this usually goes unnoticed. JPG output is saved at high quality. If every detail matters, choose PNG and accept a bigger file.

Is it safe to merge both sides of my ID card?

The merging happens on your device and the picture is not uploaded anywhere. Before sending it, writing on it who it is for and why makes the copy harder to reuse elsewhere; our guide to adding a watermark to a photo explains how.

Last updated: October 12, 2026