Before-and-after in one image: side by side, same height

2026-11-06

A repaired chair, a cleaned-up garden, a retouched product shot, a room before and after paint. A before-and-after says the most when both pictures sit next to each other in a single image — one upload, one attachment, and nobody has to swipe back and forth to compare.

Stitching them side by side

Our Stitch images tool joins images either vertically or horizontally. For a comparison, choose Horizontal. The images are placed left to right in the order of the list on the page, so the first is your "before". If they came in the wrong way round, drag a row in the list to reorder it — the joined preview updates as you go.

The result is a single JPG, saved with the quality buttons on the page and named pixelsquish_merged.jpg. It's all done in your browser; neither photo is uploaded.

What happens when the heights differ

In a horizontal stitch, the joined image is as tall as the tallest photo. Shorter photos are centred vertically and the space above and below them is filled with white. Nothing is stretched or cropped — but two photos of different heights produce white bands, and the comparison looks less like a matched pair.

The white is fixed. The fill and any gap between the images are always white, and because the output is a JPG, any transparent areas in a PNG input turn white too.

Matching sizes first looks cleaner

The best comparisons show both photos at the same size and framing. If they came from the same camera at the same settings, they probably match already. If not — one from a phone, one from a camera, or one cropped — two quick steps fix it:

1. Crop both to the same ratio. In Crop image, lock a ratio such as 4:3 or 1:1 and frame each photo so the subject sits in the same place. Equal ratio means equal shape.
2. Resize both to the same width. In Resize image, drop both in, enter one width with the aspect ratio kept — no wider than the narrower photo, since the tool won't enlarge by default — and download. Same shape plus same width gives the same height.

Then stitch: no white bands, one even strip. Matching sizes also keeps the joined image sensible — two 4000-pixel-wide photos side by side make an 8000-pixel-wide file that most places will shrink anyway, so resizing both to something like 1200 pixels wide first is rarely a loss.

Gap or no gap

The gap setting adds white space, in pixels, between the images.

• No gap (0) suits pictures that should read as one scene, or a "slider-style" comparison where the seam itself shows the change.
• A small gap — something like 10 to 20 pixels on photos around 1000 pixels wide — makes it obvious there are two separate images, which is usually the more honest presentation for a before-and-after.

Labelling them

The stitch tool doesn't add text. If you want "Before" and "After" on the image, run each photo through the watermark tool first — type the word, put it in a corner, choose white or black — and stitch the labelled versions. The text gets a soft contrasting shadow, so it stays readable on both light and dark photos.

What we deliberately don't do

We don't auto-align or auto-match the two photos. Lining up a before-and-after means deciding what should be in the same place — the doorframe, the product, the horizon — and only you know that. Equal crops and equal widths, chosen by you, make a fair comparison; a tool that guesses can make an unfair one look convincing.

The short version

• Choose Horizontal; the list order is left-to-right, drag to change it.
• Different heights are centred on white — the fill is always white, and the result is a JPG.
• Crop both to one ratio and resize to one width first for an even strip.
• A small gap reads as "two photos"; label with the watermark tool before stitching.