Merge Two PDF Pages Side By Side

Do you need to merge two PDFs together on a single page side by side? File Splice makes that task quick and easy. Joining two PDFs together is extremely common if you are creating books, instruction manuals, bi-fold brochures, comics, etc. It’s done in three simple steps:

How To Merge Two PDFs Side By Side

• Create Your Template. A template is the output or final size of what you need. Take the dimensions of your two PDFs plus any bleed and spacing between them. That will be the width and height of your template. Here are detailed instructions on creating a template.
• Upload Your PDFs. Once you have your template you can drag and drop your PDF files into the template in the Single Merge Section. The system will process your files, perform a few quick checks and then display thumbnails of your two PDFs. Click on your files to add them to the build files list and watch a preview be generated. You can drag to rearrange the order.
• Build Your New Page. Once the build list is in the order you want it to look like click the build button and the system will create your newly merged file for you to download.

Here Is Simple Example With Screenshots

Let’s say you make comics and you want to merge together 8 pages including the front and back cover. We’ll use whole numbers and leave out bleeds, margins and extra spacing to make this example easy.

The comic pages you created are 8” wide and 8” tall. This means that you need a PDF that is 16” wide and 8” tall. Taking our eight page example you would have (obviously) eight PDFs but then you’d merge them down to four files and it would look like this:

That’s the correct order they should be placed in. However, you’ll want to duplex print these, meaning you print on both sides of the paper. If you don’t duplex print your book is going to have some blank pages and you’re going to waste paper. With duplex printing you have to consider the orientation of each page. You can’t use the example above as the orientation of each page, it is simply the order. 

Why Orientation Matters When Merging Two PDFs

So with the proper orientation and duplex printing you really only need two sheets of 16”x8” paper to print this comic. This is the exact order and orientation of how it should look:

And here is the order of how you would set this up in the Simple Merge Section:

That’s it, those eight PDFs merged in that order and that orientation will produce your comic book. It’s a bit confusing to look at first if you’ve never had any experience with imposing files, especially when duplex printing is involved. You can play with the simple merge tool and don’t worry about getting it wrong, if you make a mistake simply try the merge again and delete the build that’s a mistake. 

We’re here to help so if you have questions about merging two PDF pages side by side reach out to us. We’re happy to help you get your template made, assist in merging your files or if we don’t have the answer you are looking for we’ll do our best to point you in the right direction.