Microsoft Paint is a powerful inbuilt Windows tool people normally disregard in favour of more advanced editing software the likes of Paint.Net, Gimp and Photoshop. Nevertheless, this little editing tool has a few basic photo editing tricks up its sleeve which have helped it retain its relevance on all Microsoft Windows versions ever made starting with 1.0. In contrast, applications like Explorer and Windows Media Player are looking into an early grave.
Have you ever wanted to merge two images (or more) into one, say for a side by side comparison? Or just to mesh your image with that of the girl/guy of your dreams. That might be the closest you’ll get to your love interest but who are we to judge? Sure, you can use Photoshop and do the layers thing or whatever-it’s-called. But not everybody uses Photoshop and those who do wouldn’t be reading this post to begin with. So there you have it.
Merging Two Images side by side
Step 1
Locate the images you want to merge, right-click on one of them and ‘Open with‘. Choose Paint in the options. You will probably have to resize one or both of your images to a manageable and similar size. Merging a 50 KB image with another that is 1 MB might not turn out as well as you’d want your mashup to look side by side unless your intention was to merge it on top of the larger one.
Resizing can be done either by Percentage or Pixels. End product is the same either way. Try to match the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the images to make it easier to merge later.
Step 2
Increase the size of your background by dragging the little square box shown in the image below. More canvas space means you can fit in the second image you intend to merge side by side with the first.
Step 3
Click on the drop-down arrow under the “Paste” button in the menu bar. Select “Paste from” and select your second image. The image will appear on top of the first. Simply drag it to the white space you created earlier.
Related:
- How to Merge Two Images into one with Microsoft Paint 3D
- How to remove an image background using Microsoft Word
Step 4
Drag the second image and reposition it with the first. The end result might be a little skewed. Use the Selection tool to trim the edges. Click on Rectangular selection and trim out the uneven background and excess canvas space you don’t need.
Step 5
Click the far-left button in the menu bar and select the “Save as” option to save the merged images as a new image
Congratulations! You have successfully merged two images using Microsoft Paint.
Featured Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash
