A Before and After Photoshop slider is a great way for how to show Before and After photos of your digital creations. In this tutorial, I show you step-by-step how to put Before and After pictures together in Photoshop and how to add a slider effect to the image comparison. You’ll learn how to create a vertical and horizontal Before and After slider in Photoshop, as well as a diagonal split screen Before/After slider look!
How to create Before and After pictures in Photoshop?
This is probably the most common question that every digital artist ponders about. Because, if you’re creating digital art, you oftentimes start out your work with a single source image. Once finished, your creations no longer look anything like the original picture, right?
People might get curious about your creative process and ask to see before and after versions of your pictures.
In fact, posting Before-and-After images of your artworks on social media and art websites is a fantastic way to give people insight into your work process and show off your editing skills!
It’s also a great idea to use a Before and After Slider on Facebook and for Pinterest Pins. Since many people are keen to see how the image started out, Before-and-After image posts have the potential to drive a lot of traffic to your website or online store.
In this tutorial, I’ll be showing you how to create a ‘Before & After’ slider in Photoshop. Even though Photoshop doesn’t allow you to create a dynamic image slider as WordPress, you still have a number of options to achieve a nice Before/After slider look in Photoshop!
Grab your FREE Photoshop Before & After Slider
If you don’t want to create the three types of Before and After Sliders that we’re going to make in this tutorial from scratch, you can download all three pre-made sliders FOR FREE from the Freebie Library!
These are three techniques to make a Before and After slider in Photoshop:
3 Techniques to make a Before & After Slider in Photoshop
TECHNIQUE 1: Create a vertical before and after slider in Photoshop
In Technique 1, I’ll be showing you how to create a vertical Before and After Photoshop slider. As I said above, it’s not possible to create a dynamic slider in Photoshop that people can move around to compare the original image and your final creation.
However, you can still create some nice slider-like Before and After image comparison in Photoshop – just like the one you see below. 👇
Before & After images of Lemon from my Lip Service Collection.
To create this type of Before and After picture, you first of all need to place two photos side by side in Photoshop. So let’s go ahead and do that!
How to put Before and After pictures together in Photoshop
The following 6 basic steps will show you how to put Before and After pictures together in Photoshop:
- Open Photoshop and import the Before photo by going to File > Open in the top menu bar. Choose the desired image from your hard disk and click on the Open button.
- Repeat the above steps to open your After picture as well. Both your Before and your After pictures should now be open in Photoshop, with each being in a dedicated tab.
- To place the two photos side by side on the same canvas, you’ll need to enlarge the canvas size of one image. Let’s say we want to make the canvas of the Before image larger. To do so, go the Before image tab and click on Image > Canvas Size in the top menu. This will bring up the Canvas Size dialog box.
- As we want to create a vertical Before and After slider in Photoshop, we need to double the width of the canvas. For the example below, this means entering 40 centimeters to get twice the width.
- In the Anchor section, move the point to where you want the Before image to be on the canvas. For example, if you want the Before image to be on the left-hand side, position the point in the center left field. Once you’re done, hit OK!
- Now it’s time to add the After image to the larger canvas. Go to the After photo tab and grab the Move Tool from the Toolbar. Then drag the After photo over to the Before image tab and drop it on the canvas. Place it on the right-hand side of the Before image and tweak its position with the arrow keys on your keyboard until both pictures align.
These were the basic steps for how to put Before and After pictures together in Photoshop. Now it's time to get down to the nitty-gritty!
Creating the vertical Before and After slider look in Photoshop
To create a vertical divider between the Before and the After images, add a new layer and select the Line Tool from the Toolbar. Choose the Fill color in the top bar and disable Stroke. Then move the Line Tool over the canvas. Press and hold Shift on your keyboard to get a straight vertical line.
You can customize the divider to your liking. For example, you can add layer effects, such as an Outer Glow, a Drop Shadow, or a Gradient Overlay. It’s totally up to you! I’ll go ahead and enable the Outer Glow effect.
Related: → Using Layer Styles In Photoshop – Photoshop Layer Styles Tutorial
Next, I want to add a little handle in the middle that makes it even more obvious that I’m showing a Before & After image comparison.
Therefore, I’m going to create a new layer, grab the Ellipse Tool from the Toolbar, select the Fill color and disable Stroke. Then I’m drawing a circle while holding Shift so that the circle gets perfectly round.
Again, you can use layer styles to customize the circle to your liking. I’m also adding two little arrows that point left and right inside the circle.
Last but not least, I want to add two tabs that read ‘Before’ and ‘After’ left and right to the divider. I’m going to lay out the tab background with the Rounded Rectangle Tool and decrease the Opacity of my black Fill color. To make the tabs look nicer, I’m adding a Stroke and a Drop Shadow effect.
Duplicate the tab and move it over to the respectively other side, then add a new layer, choose the Type Tool from the Toolbar and type in the text you want to appear on top of the tabs. Most likely this will be something like ‘Before’ and ‘After’… 😆
And that was it! You’ve just learned how create a Before and After slider in Photoshop!
If you don’t want to design the Before and After slider in Photoshop from scratch, you can download the PSD file in the Freebie Library and then tweak everything to your heart’s content!
TECHNIQUE 2: Create a horizontal before and after slider in Photoshop
Creating a horizontal Before and After Slider in Photoshop is very easy now. Simply repeat Steps 1 to 6 above under “How to put two pictures side by side in Photoshop.” But instead of doubling the width of the canvas, you now need to double the height.
Once you’ve increased the canvas height accordingly and placed both your Before and After pictures on the same canvas, you can change the order of the two pictures as you please.
For the example here, I’ve placed the After image at the top.
If you’ve downloaded the Before & After Slider Photoshop PSD file from the Freebie Library, then creating a horizontal slider is plain sailing.
Simply flip both separator and handle by 90 degrees by going to Edit > Transform > Rotate 90° CW in the top menu bar, and position the ‘Before’ and ‘After’ text tabs wherever you like them best!
TECHNIQUE 3: Create a diagonal before and after slider in Photoshop
In the third technique, I’m going to show you how to make a split screen Before and After picture in Photoshop that features a diagonal slider effect.
Depending on the image comparison you want to show, this can be a nice alternative to a vertical or horizontal Before-and-After slider look.
You can also use it as a teaser for upcoming work that you don’t want to fully reveal yet. Of course, you can change the offset of the Before and After photos, so one photo shows more than the other!
Diagonal Before & After image slider of Lemon.
To create a diagonal split screen Before-and-After Photoshop slider effect, these are the steps you need to follow:
- Open the Before image in Photoshop by going to File > Open in the top menu bar. Select the Before image and click on the Open button.
- Repeat the same steps for your After image. Both your Before and After photos should now be open in Photoshop, each in a dedicated tab.
- For the diagonal slider effect, we don’t need to enlarge the canvas size. Therefore, you can simply click on the After image tab, select the Move Tool from the Toolbar, drag the image over to the Before tab. Press and hold Shift while you are dropping the image on the canvas. This will align both images parallel on top of each other.
- Next, choose the Polygonal Lasso Tool from the Toolbar and, on your After image layer, select the triangular area of the After photo that you want to show. You will see that it’s easy to get straight lines with the Polygonal Lasso Tool. To select exactly half of the canvas diagonally, you simply need to move the Polygonal Lasso Tool from the top left corner down to the bottom right corner, and then around the upper edge of the canvas.
- With the selection active, go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal Selection in the top menu bar. Alternatively, you can also click the ‘Add layer mask‘ icon at the bottom of your layers panel. In both cases, the selection will be visible, while the other part of the image will now be hidden.
To create a diagonal slider effect, add a new layer and pick again the Line Tool from the Toolbar. Then start at the upper left corner and draw a line down to the lower right corner. Add again a circular handle and two little arrows, if you wish.
You can also place the two ‘Before’ and ‘After’ text tabs on the canvas to make it immediately obvious that your are showing a comparison of the initial picture and the final result of your creation.
Of course, you can choose how much you want to show of your Before and your After picture by moving around the layer mask and the separator.
*Tip: To move the layer mask without moving the image, unlink the mask from the layer by clicking on the little chain symbol between the thumbnail of the image and the thumbnail of the mask.
Grab your FREE Photoshop Before & After Slider
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I hope that this tutorial on how to create a Before/After slider in Photoshop was helpful. If you found any value in it, please feel free to share it with other artists so they can also learn from it!
If you are using anything of what I’ve showed you in this post, don’t forget to tag me on Instagram @ginangiela, or post a link here in the comments. I’d love to see your creations! Make sure to sign up for my email list below so you don’t miss out on new Photoshop tutorials, perks for subscribers and other cool stuff. ♥
This tutorial was incredibly helpful! The step-by-step instructions on creating different slider effects in Photoshop made it easy to follow along. I especially loved the diagonal slider effect—such a unique way to showcase before-and-after comparisons!
Hi Emma, great to hear that you found the tutorial helpful. Before-and-after sliders are definitely a fantastic way to give insights into your creative process and let your audience know how the artwork started out. These days, it’s also a fantastic way to make your art stand out against AI-generated images.