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Merge Images Side by Side Online: Meet PicFix's Newest Tool

·5 min read

I was renovating my bathroom and wanted to post a before-and-after shot on Reddit. I had a photo of the old tile and a photo of the new one. I wanted them side by side in a single image so people could compare without swiping. That simple task took me three different tools, a Photoshop subscription nag screen, and twenty minutes of frustration. So I built a merge tool that does it in five seconds — and it just went live on PicFix.

What Is the Merge Images Tool?

It joins multiple images into a single picture. You choose the direction — horizontal (side by side) or vertical (stacked) — and a gap between each image. Upload two photos or ten, arrange them in any order, and the tool stitches them together into one PNG.

Unlike installing desktop software or signing up for a cloud service, PicFix runs entirely in your browser. Your images never touch a server. Drag, drop, arrange, merge, download. That is the whole flow.

Try it now: Merge Images tool.

Five Ways You Will Use This

1. Before and After Comparisons

This is the reason I built it. Home renovation, weight loss, photo editing, design revisions — a single side-by-side image shows the change instantly. No sliders, no carousels, no "swipe to see". Just two images next to each other with a small gap. Reddit loves this format. So do review sites and portfolio pages.

2. Product Shots for E-Commerce

If you sell online, you know the drill: front view, side view, back view, detail shot. Instead of making the customer click through a gallery, merge them into one wide product image. Every angle visible at a glance. I have seen this increase engagement on listings noticeably.

3. Full Chat Screenshots

Phone screenshots cut off conversations mid-scroll. If the chat is longer than your screen, you either take multiple screenshots and make the reader swipe, or you merge them vertically into one long image. This is how people share full Twitter threads, WhatsApp conversations, and code snippets. The vertical merge mode exists exactly for this.

4. Instagram Collages and Grids

Instagram limits carousels and grid layouts can be tedious to plan manually. Merge related photos into a single wide image for a cohesive story. Or merge a row of three images at exact dimensions and post them as one. Combined with PicFix's resize tool, you can batch-prepare images to the same dimensions before merging, so nothing looks misaligned.

5. Simple Collages Without Canva

Not every collage needs custom positioning, shadows, and text overlays. Sometimes you just want a clean grid of photos — team headshots, event recaps, family photos. The merge tool handles the basic case: align by height (horizontal) or width (vertical), add spacing, done. No design skills required.

How to Use It

The interface is intentionally minimal. Here is the full workflow:

  1. Drop images onto the upload area. PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, BMP, or SVG. Two or more, up to 100MB each.
  2. Arrange the order. Each image has up and down arrows to reorder. The merge follows the order you set — first image on the left (horizontal) or top (vertical).
  3. Choose direction. Horizontal places images side by side at the same height (tallest determines the row height). Vertical stacks them at the same width (widest determines the column width).
  4. Set gap. A slider from 0 to 50 pixels controls the spacing between images. Zero for a seamless panorama, 4-8px for a clean divider.
  5. Click Merge. The result renders in your browser and displays a preview with file size. Download as PNG.

Every step happens locally. The canvas API does the stitching, no data leaves your computer. If you need the output smaller after merging, run it through PicFix's compress tool to shrink file size for web use.

What It Does Not Do (Yet)

I want to be upfront about the limitations so you are not surprised:

  • Output is always PNG.Canvas encodes to PNG for lossless quality. For smaller files, download the PNG then convert to JPEG or WebP using PicFix's convert tool.
  • No custom positioning. Every image is aligned automatically — by height in horizontal mode, by width in vertical mode. If you need pixel-perfect manual placement, a full editing app is the right choice.
  • White background only. The canvas fills with white behind the images. If your images have transparency, the white will show through. Download and trim the background if needed.
  • No GIF support in output. GIFs can be uploaded as source and their first frame will be used, but the merged result is a static PNG.

These limits are all solvable in future updates, but I wanted to ship the 80% case first and see how people use it. The current version handles the majority of merge scenarios that I encounter daily.

Why Another Merge Tool?

There are a hundred ways to merge images. Photoshop, GIMP, Canva, mobile apps, command-line tools. But every option I tried had a friction point: requires login, uploads to a server, costs money, or takes too many clicks to do something simple.

PicFix merges images with zero friction. Open the page, drop files, click one button. No account, no cost, no cloud. It fits the same philosophy as every other tool on this site: private, fast, and focused on a single task. If you need to merge images more than once a month, bookmark it and save yourself the software hunt next time.

Try the merge tool now

Drag in your first two images and see how fast it works. No upload, no signup, no limits on how many images you combine. A before and after comparison that took me 20 minutes now takes five seconds.

Merge Images →Resize Before Merging →