Combining is not panorama stitching
“Combine two photos into one” covers two jobs that sound identical and are not, and picking the wrong one wastes an afternoon.
Two pictures, each still recognisably itself, sitting beside or above one another with a clean edge between them. Before and after. A sequence of screenshots. A four-up product grid. This is what the tool on this page does, and the arithmetic is simple enough to be exact.
Several overlapping shots of one scene fused into a single continuous vista. That needs feature detection to find where frames overlap, a projection to correct for the camera turning between shots, and seam blending so the join disappears. Dedicated panorama software is the right answer there.
PDFGami's combiner does the first and makes no attempt at the second. Feed it two overlapping shots of the same beach and you get both shots side by side, the overlapping strip appearing twice with a hard line where they meet. The tool repeats that warning under the image list, so nobody discovers it after the download.
How to combine photos into one image
- 1Open the combiner. Go to pdfgami.com/combine-images — no install, no account.
- 2Add up to 30 pictures. Drop them on the page, pick them from a file dialog, or paste one from the clipboard. PNG, JPG, WebP and SVG can be mixed freely in the same batch; anything else is skipped with a message saying so.
- 3Choose a direction. Stacked top to bottom, side by side, or a grid of 1 to 12 columns. The preview redraws as you change it.
- 4Fix the order. Every picture is a numbered row showing its filename and pixel dimensions, with up and down arrows beside it. The number is its position in the finished image. An X removes one; clear empties the batch.
- 5Tune the look. Set how mismatched sizes are reconciled, the gap between pictures, the outer margin, the alignment and the background colour. The preview is the real layout at reduced scale, not an approximation.
- 6Download. Pick PNG, JPG or WebP. The button carries the exact output dimensions, so you know what you are about to save.
Side by side, stacked, or a grid
Direction is the one decision that changes everything else, and in practice the destination picks it for you.
- Side by sideThe classic before-and-after pair, and the answer to “merge two pictures side by side”. Images are scaled to a common height and laid left to right in row order, so a portrait and a landscape shot line up without either being cropped.
- StackedTop to bottom, images scaled to a common width. This is what you want for putting screenshots together into one long image — a whole chat thread, a checkout flow, a settings page that needed three captures. It also reads best in a message, where a tall image scrolls and a wide one shrinks to nothing.
- GridPick a column count between 1 and 12 and the pictures fill left to right, wrapping to a new row when the columns run out. Every cell is the same size and each picture sits inside its own, so one portrait photo among landscapes does not shove its row sideways. This is the collage shape: nine holiday photos, six colourways of a product.
When the pictures are different sizes
Real batches are never uniform — a phone photo next to a screenshot next to a logo is the normal case. Three settings decide what happens, and none of them ever distorts a picture: when an image is scaled, both dimensions are scaled by the same factor, so the aspect ratio survives untouched.
The default. Everything is brought up to match the biggest picture, so no detail is thrown away from the large ones. The cost is that a small image enlarged past its native resolution looks soft.
Everything comes down to the smallest picture. Nothing is blurred by enlargement and the file is far smaller — useful when one 4000-pixel photo would otherwise drag a batch of 800-pixel screenshots up with it. The cost is detail lost from the big images.
No scaling at all. Every picture is placed at its native pixel size — the right choice when the different sizes are the point, or when nothing may be resampled. Expect ragged edges where a narrow image sits beside a wide one.
If a photo is the wrong shape rather than the wrong size, scaling will not save it: trim it in the image cropper first. A set cropped to the same ratio makes a far tidier grid than the originals do.
Gap, margin, background and alignment
Four controls in the image combiner separate a result that looks deliberate from one that looks accidental.
- GapZero to 200 pixels between neighbouring images. Zero gives a seamless block, right for a continuous screenshot; ten to twenty pixels reads as separate panels in a before-and-after. In a grid the gap applies between both columns and rows.
- MarginZero to 300 pixels of border around the whole result. A margin is what makes a collage look framed rather than cropped.
- BackgroundA colour picker fills the gaps and the margin — white for print, black for screenshots of dark interfaces, a brand colour for a social post. Tick transparent instead and the gaps stay clear, as long as you save as PNG or WebP. Pick JPG with transparent ticked and the tool fills white and warns you, because JPG has no alpha channel.
- AlignWhere a smaller image sits in the space around it: left, centre or right when stacking, top, centre or bottom when side by side. Centre is the safe default; left is worth trying for stacked screenshots, where a consistent left edge reads as one continuous document.
What the tool deliberately does not offer: per-image borders, rounded corners, captions and preset templates. Direction, gap, margin and alignment are the whole layout — which is why the preview can be an exact rendering of the file you are about to download.
Choosing PNG, JPG or WebP
The output format is independent of what went in, so a batch of JPGs can come out as a PNG.
- PNGLossless, transparency-capable, and the right answer for anything with text or sharp edges — which means almost every screenshot collage. Larger files are the trade.
- JPGMuch smaller for photographs, with a quality slider balancing size against artefacts. No transparency, so the background colour is baked in.
- WebPSmaller than both at comparable quality, with a quality slider and transparency. Every current browser reads it; a few older desktop applications do not.
If the result is still too big for an email, run it through the image compressor. If it is headed for a document rather than a message, the JPG to PDF converter will wrap it in a page for printing.
Limits worth knowing before you start
Three ceilings, all visible in the interface rather than discovered after the fact.
- 30 imagesOne batch takes up to thirty pictures, which keeps the tab responsive while every decoded bitmap is held in memory for the live preview. Extras are left out with a message saying so.
- 16384 pixelsThe longest side of the result is capped there, because that is where Chrome and Safari stop allocating a canvas — Firefox goes further, but the cap has to hold for the strictest of them, and an over-large canvas fails by producing a blank picture rather than an error. Past it, everything scales down together with proportions intact, and a warning shows the percentage and the final size.
- Your deviceThirty full-resolution photos held as uncompressed bitmaps is real memory. If a batch stalls, combine in two passes — join half, then feed that result back in with the rest.
Why none of this is uploaded
The pictures people combine are rarely neutral: before-and-after medical photos, screenshots of private conversations, unreleased product shots. The standard online collage maker uploads all of it to a server — and now a copy exists somewhere you cannot reach.
PDFGami's combiner never sends a byte. Every file is decoded by your browser, the layout is worked out in plain JavaScript, and the finished picture is drawn on a canvas in the same tab and saved straight to your device. The preview is that same layout at reduced scale, computed from the same numbers, which is why the download always matches what you approved.
You do not have to take that on faith. Open your developer tools, switch to the Network tab, and click download: a tool that uploads sends a POST request the size of your photos, a browser-only one sends nothing. The same check works on every tool in the image tools collection.
Frequently asked questions
How do I merge two pictures side by side?
Open the image combiner, drop both pictures in, and set the direction to "Side by side". The preview immediately shows the pair as one wide image. If the two photos are different heights, leave the size matching on so they are scaled to a common height, then download the result as PNG, JPG or WebP.
Is this the same as stitching a panorama?
No, and the difference matters. This tool places images next to each other at the gap you choose. It does not look for overlapping features and it does not blend seams, so two overlapping shots of the same landscape show a visible join with the overlap repeated. For a true panorama you want dedicated stitching software. For before-and-after pairs, screenshot sequences, product grids and collages, this is the right tool.
How many photos can I combine at once?
Up to 30 images in one batch, in any mix of PNG, JPG, WebP and SVG. You can also paste an image straight from the clipboard instead of picking a file, which is the fastest way to put a run of screenshots together.
Will combining stretch or distort my photos?
No. When images are scaled to a common width or height, the other dimension is scaled by the same factor, so every picture keeps its original aspect ratio and nothing is squashed to fill a slot. If a picture is narrower than its neighbours after scaling, the alignment setting decides which side the spare room falls on — the image is never stretched into it.
Can I put screenshots together into one long image?
Yes — it is the most common use of the stacked direction. Paste or drop the screenshots, keep the direction on "Stacked (top to bottom)", and they are scaled to a common width and laid out in order. Use the arrows on each row to fix the sequence, and add a small gap if you want a visible line between the shots.
How do I get a transparent background instead of white?
Tick the transparent checkbox and save as PNG or WebP — both carry an alpha channel, so the margin and the gaps stay clear. JPG has no alpha channel, so if you pick JPG with transparent ticked the tool fills the background with white and warns you why.
Can I reorder the images after adding them?
Yes. Each image sits on a numbered row with up and down arrow buttons, and the number is its position in the finished layout. There is no drag-and-drop — the arrows move a picture one place earlier or later, and the preview redraws as soon as you click.
Is there a size limit on the combined image?
The result is capped at 16384 pixels on its longest side, because that is the largest canvas Chrome and Safari will allocate — Firefox allows more, but the cap has to suit the strictest browser, and an over-large canvas hands back a blank image rather than an error. If your layout exceeds the cap it is scaled down proportionally and a warning gives the percentage and the final pixel size. Thirty full-resolution phone photos stacked vertically will hit this; a handful of screenshots will not.
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