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Merge Images Into One
Combine several pictures into one — side by side, stacked into a column, or arranged in a grid. Drag the rows to change the order, and the preview updates as you go. The finished image is made on our server, at full resolution.
Drag & drop your images here Add more images
Up to 20 images, up to 20 MB each.
Order
Drag a row, or use the arrows.
Result: pixels
Step by step
How to merge images into one in 5 steps
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Add your images
Drop them all at once, or add more later.
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Put them in order
Drag a row, or use the arrows. Order is the thing people spend the most time on, so it is the easiest thing to change.
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Choose an arrangement — side by side, stacked, or a grid
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Decide what to do about different sizes
The section below explains the two options; the preview shows both immediately.
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Merge and download
Good to know
Combining images of different sizes
The only hard part is that your images are different sizes
Joining two pictures that happen to be identical dimensions is trivial. Real images almost never are — a phone photo, a screenshot and a scan have nothing in common — and what a tool does about that is the entire difference between a good result and one that looks broken.
There are two honest answers, and this tool offers both.
Resize to match
Everything is scaled to a common height (side by side) or a common width (stacked), so the result is a clean block with no gaps. This is what most people want most of the time.
The scaling always goes down, to the smallest image. Enlarging the others to match the biggest would be the obvious alternative and it is the wrong one: upscaling invents no new detail, it just makes existing detail softer and the file larger. Scaling down costs nothing but pixels you were not going to see anyway.
Keep original sizes
Nothing is resized at all. The strip becomes as tall as its tallest image, and the shorter ones sit in background padding, which you can colour or make transparent. Choose this when the images must stay pixel-for-pixel as they are — comparisons, documentation, anything where a reader might measure something.
What is not offered: stretching
Stretching images to fill their space makes every dimension line up perfectly and makes faces look wrong. It is the single most common way a merged image announces itself as a mistake, so there is no setting for it here. Aspect ratio is preserved on every path.
Grids
A grid uses uniform cells, because a grid of unequal cells is not a grid — it is a ragged mess that reads as a bug. Each image is centred in its cell and contained rather than cropped: the whole picture is always visible. Cropping would make the grid tidier, but silently discarding part of somebody's photograph is not a decision a layout should be making for them.
Set the number of columns and the rows follow. A final row that is not full stays left-aligned rather than being spread out, so the columns still line up.
Quality
Output format and size limits
Each image is drawn once, at full resolution, and the result is encoded once. There is no intermediate save, so nothing accumulates JPEG generations along the way.
Choosing the output
- JPEG with a background colour is right for photographs. White is the usual choice; black suits dark images better and hides the seams.
- PNG with transparency is right when the merged image will be placed on something else, or when the sources have transparency of their own. It is a much larger file for photographic content.
Transparency and JPEG cannot be combined — JPEG has no alpha channel, and a "transparent" JPEG comes out with black padding rather than white. Ticking transparent switches the output to PNG for that reason.
Size limits
A merged image can be up to 16,384 pixels on a side, and a layout past that is refused with an explanation rather than attempted. Twenty full-resolution photos in a single row will hit this easily.
If you meet it: use a grid rather than one long strip, resize the sources first, or merge in batches.
Afterwards
A merged photograph is often large. Compressing it typically takes a substantial fraction off with no visible change, and a merged image is a good candidate because flat background padding compresses extremely well.
What people use this for
- Before-and-after comparisons — the most common use by far, and the one where keeping original sizes matters, since a reader may be comparing detail.
- Photo strips for a post or a message, where three pictures as one save everyone scrolling.
- Screenshot sequences showing steps in order, usually stacked.
- Contact sheets — a grid of many images to review or send as one file.
- Product shots combined for a listing that allows only one image.
- Documents photographed in parts and rejoined into one page.
Order is the part that takes the time
Choosing an arrangement takes a second; getting six screenshots into the right sequence does not. So the list is the biggest thing on the page, rows drag, and the arrows work when dragging is awkward — on a phone, or with a long list where the drop target is off screen.
Removing one image does not disturb the order of the rest, and images added later join the end
rather than being sorted by name. Sorting by filename sounds helpful and is usually wrong:
IMG_1002 and IMG_998 sort in the opposite order to the one they were
taken in.
A note on merging into a PDF
If what you actually want is one document containing several images, one page each, that is a different job — a merged image is a single picture, and printing a long strip on A4 gives you a thin band across the middle of one sheet.
For that, convert each image with JPG to PDF and combine the documents, which also keeps each image at full size on its own page.
Privacy
What happens to your file
This tool runs on our server, so it works the same on every phone and computer. Your file is uploaded, and this is exactly what happens to it:
- Stored outside the public web root under a random name, never under your file's name.
- Processed, with the original upload deleted immediately — whether it succeeded or failed.
- The result sits behind a signed link that only you receive, which stops working after 20 minutes, and the file is deleted the moment you download it.
- Anything never collected is deleted automatically within 30 minutes.
- The image itself is never logged or kept. If a conversion fails, we record the formats involved and the error — not the file.
- Camera metadata, including any GPS coordinates recording where a photo was taken, is removed from the result. Only the rotation needed to show the image the right way up is kept.
Questions & answers
Merge Images: frequently asked questions
My images are different sizes. What happens?
You choose. "Resize to match" scales them to a common height or width for a clean block with no gaps — always scaling down to the smallest, because enlarging invents no detail and just softens the image. "Keep original sizes" resizes nothing and pads the shorter ones with a background colour you pick. Nothing is ever stretched, since that is what makes a merged image look like a mistake.
Why does it scale down to the smallest instead of up to the largest?
Because upscaling adds no information. Enlarging a 200-pixel image to 800 gives you a soft 800-pixel image and a bigger file, not more detail. Scaling down costs only pixels you would not have seen. If you need the result large, resize the small image properly first — or use "keep original sizes".
Can I change the order after adding the images?
Yes — drag any row, or use the up and down arrows. Removing an image leaves the order of the rest alone, and images added later join the end rather than being sorted by filename, since filename order is frequently the wrong order.
Are my images uploaded?
Yes. The preview is drawn in your browser, and the merged image is made on our server from your originals so that it works the same on every device. Your uploads are deleted the moment the merged image is made, it is deleted as soon as you download it, and no one looks at your images.
Can I keep a transparent background?
Yes, but only as PNG. JPEG has no alpha channel, so a transparent JPEG comes out with black padding rather than white — ticking transparent switches the output to PNG for that reason. For photographs a JPEG with a white or black background is usually the better file.
It says the result is too large. Why?
A merged image can be up to 16,384 pixels on a side, and twenty full-size photos in one row hit that easily. Use a grid rather than a strip, resize the sources first, or merge in batches.
Does merging reduce quality?
Each image is drawn once and the result is encoded once, so nothing accumulates JPEG generations. The only quality change is from scaling in "resize to match" mode, and that is downwards, which is the direction that costs nothing visible.
Keep going
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