Side-by-Side Collage

The Side-by-Side Collage tool is a free browser utility that merges two images into one file, placed next to each other horizontally. It is useful for before-and-after comparisons of edited photos, showing two angles of the same subject, or building diptychs for a portfolio. It sizes the pair to the same height for you, so you do not need to open editing software just to combine two pictures.

Click the Left Image area and choose a photo, or drag one onto it, then do the same for the Right Image area. A preview appears under Collage Settings. Set the Gap between the photos and the Padding around them in pixels, and pick a Background color for both. The preview updates as you change them. Click Download Collage to save the result as side-by-side-collage.jpg.

Desktop editing software can make a diptych, but it takes several steps: create a canvas, work out its size, place both images, scale one to match and export. This tool does that sizing for you. It builds the canvas from your photos, matches their heights, and adds the gap and padding you set, so a comparison image takes a few clicks. That suits quick before-and-after posts or client previews.

A side-by-side layout works well in several situations. Portrait photographers pair a wide environmental shot with a tight close-up to tell more of the session's story. Real estate photographers show an exterior next to a key interior. It is also the classic way to show the impact of your editing, with the unedited frame next to the final image, and it makes engaging split-screen content for social media.

Nothing is cropped. The left image stays at its own size, and the right image is scaled up or down to exactly the same height, so the two line up along the top and bottom. Their widths follow from their shapes, so a vertical and a horizontal photo make an uneven pair. For a balanced diptych, crop both photos to the same shape before adding them.

Many grid apps are built for casual phone use: they shrink images, add watermarks or force photos into square templates. This tool does one thing: it places exactly two photos side by side at full resolution, with no watermark, stickers or text, and saves the result at the highest JPG quality. The output is as large as your left photo's height and the combined widths allow, so it is ready for client delivery or your portfolio.

You can use any image your browser can open, such as JPG, PNG and WebP. TIFF, PSD and camera RAW files cannot be opened in a browser, so convert those to JPG first. The collage is always saved as a JPG at maximum quality, at full resolution. Transparent areas in a PNG show the background color you chose. Embedded metadata and color profiles are not carried over, so export in sRGB.

Yes. The Gap field sets the space between the two photos in pixels, from 0 for photos that touch directly, which suits a continuous panorama, up to 500. The Padding field adds a frame of the same width around the outside. Both are filled with the Background color, which you can set to any color, with white or black giving a clean, gallery-style look. The preview updates as you type.

Usually it is instant, because everything happens in your browser. Very large photos make a very large canvas: two 45-megapixel images side by side can approach the size limit some browsers allow for a single image, especially on phones, which can make the preview slow or blank. If that happens, export smaller copies of your photos, for example 3000 pixels tall, and build the collage from those.

No. The collage is built entirely within your web browser, on your own device. Your photos are never uploaded, not even temporarily, so there is nothing to delete once you download your collage. They are not used for anything else, and no copyright is claimed over them. To use the tool, you confirm once that you are a photographer and create or log into a free Imagen account.