Slider, Side by Side, Top / Bottom or Tap to Switch: Which Comparison Mode to Use
Four comparison modes ship free and unlimited in the app. Here is how to choose between them by the shape of your subject, not by taste, and which ones actually reach a finished video today.
You have the pair. It is matched, it is lit properly, and now you are looking at four buttons in the editor: Slider, Side by Side, Top / Bottom, Tap to Switch. Nothing in the app tells you which one to tap, and the honest answer is not “whichever looks nicest”, it is “whichever fits the shape of what you photographed”.
That is the whole method below. Not taste, shape. A comparison mode is a container, and a container that is the wrong shape for what you put in it hides the detail that made the job worth photographing in the first place.
Decide by the shape of the subject, not by taste
Before anything else, ask yourself one question about the pair you just shot: is the interesting part one detail, is the subject taller than it is wide, is it wider than it is tall, or is it something busy that only reads properly one photograph at a time?
Each of those four questions has one right answer among the four modes, and it is the same answer whether you are photographing a driveway, a haircut or a kitchen. Here is each mode on its own, what it is actually for, and what happens when you reach for it on the wrong subject.
Slider: one dominant detail
Slider puts a single frame on screen with a divider running through it, and it is the mode most people picture the moment they hear the words “before and after”. The before and the after occupy exactly the same space, so a viewer’s eye stays in one place while the divider does the work of switching between them.
That makes it the right choice whenever the whole story is one thing changing in one place: a panel of paintwork, a patch of carpet, a section of driveway, a close-up of a tattoo cover-up. The subject stays fixed and the divider crosses it, which is a satisfying thing to watch because nothing else in the frame is competing for attention.
It is the wrong choice for anything wide, because a divider crossing a driveway or a whole room shrinks both halves into a fraction of the frame and the detail at the far edges disappears. It is also the mode to reach for if you only get to pick one, because it is the only mode that reliably carries into a finished video on the free tier, which the export section below covers properly.
Side by Side: tall subjects, two full frames
Side by Side puts both photographs on screen at once, full height, next to each other, divided by a plain rule rather than a moving line. Nothing to drag, nothing to miss: a viewer sees the whole before and the whole after in the same glance.
The trade-off is width. Splitting a vertical frame in half leaves each photograph roughly half as wide as it was, which is exactly why this mode suits a tall subject rather than a wide one. A person standing full length, a doorway shot, anything where the subject is naturally taller than it is broad, holds up fine at half width because there was headroom to spare. A driveway does not, because the half-width crop starts cutting into the sides of the actual surface you cleaned.
Side by Side is also the mode worth reaching for when you want both frames visible at once without asking a viewer to do anything, which matters on a slow-scrolling feed post rather than a video someone watches for four seconds.
Top / Bottom: wide subjects
Top / Bottom stacks the two photographs instead of splitting them side to side, and it exists for exactly the case Slider and Side by Side both handle badly: a subject that is wider than it is tall. A driveway, a garden bed, a whole room shot from a doorway, a wide plot of land.
Stacked, each photograph keeps its full width. Nothing at the edges gets cropped away to make room for the other frame, which is the entire point when the edges are where the job actually happened. This is the mode this site’s own guides for pressure washing, landscaping and renovation reach for first, because all three trades photograph subjects that are naturally wide.
The cost is height: two full-width photographs stacked on top of each other take up more vertical space than the other three modes, so on a small caption-heavy layout the seam between them can end up close to wherever your label sits. More on that below.
Tap to Switch: small screens, busy subjects
Tap to Switch shows one photograph at a time, and a tap flips between them. There is no divider, no split, no shrinking either frame to make room for the other. Whatever you photographed fills the whole screen, one version at a time.
That makes it the cleanest read for anything busy or detailed on a small screen: a car interior with a dozen surfaces in it, a cluttered room, a close fixture like a sink or a shower screen where the change is easy to miss if the frame is halved. It hands control to the viewer rather than timing the reveal for them, which suits something that rewards a second look over something that rewards a quick one.
It is the weakest choice when the point is the comparison itself rather than either photograph alone, because nothing on screen ever shows the before and the after together. A viewer who does not bother tapping only ever sees one half of the story.
A quick decision
| Subject shape | Best mode | Reaches video today |
|---|---|---|
| One dominant detail: a panel, a patch, a close-up | Slider | Yes, free |
| Taller than it is wide: a person, a doorway | Side by Side | Only with Zoom In, Pro |
| Wider than it is tall: a driveway, a garden bed, a room | Top / Bottom | Image export only, for now |
| Busy or detailed, viewed on a small screen | Tap to Switch | Image export only, for now |
What actually reaches a video today
This is worth stating plainly rather than discovering at the export sheet, because a comparison mode and a reveal animation are two different decisions in the editor, and right now they are not fully independent of each other.
Slider Reveal, an eased wipe across the frame, is the one reveal animation on the free tier, and it is built for exactly the Slider comparison mode: the divider you chose in the editor is the same line the wipe animates across in the finished video. Choose Slider, export a video, and you get back what you built.
Side by Side has a video path too, but only on Pro, through the Zoom In reveal: both photographs side by side, then the reveal, then a slow push in from 1.0 to 1.3. Its whole animation is built around a side-by-side frame, which is the one place the other three modes genuinely line up with a reveal beyond Slider.
Top / Bottom and Tap to Switch do not reach a video yet. The video exporter currently takes its layout from the reveal animation you picked rather than from the comparison mode itself, and no reveal animation exists today that reproduces a stacked frame or a tap-to-flip in motion. Build a pair in either mode and the image export honours it exactly. Ask for a video and it currently falls back to a layout you did not choose, which is why the honest move today is to export those two as a still rather than a video. A fix is logged for a coming release, and this page will say so the day it ships.
None of this touches the still image export, which honours all four comparison modes properly right now. If a wide driveway is the subject and you want it in Top / Bottom, the image export is the one that gives you exactly that, today.
What a comparison mode does to your caption
The mode you pick decides where the hard line in the frame sits, and a caption in a fixed position can end up sitting right on top of it, which is worth thinking about before you type anything.
Slider and Side by Side both put their line down the vertical centre of the frame. A caption centred on the frame competes directly with that line for the same space, so a bottom band, left or right, tends to read more cleanly than dead centre. Top / Bottom flips the problem sideways: the seam runs horizontally, roughly through the middle of the frame, so a caption in a top-band position can crowd it, and a bottom band clears it entirely. Tap to Switch has no line at all, because only one photograph is ever on screen, which makes it the one mode where a caption in any position is safe from the start.
None of this is a hard rule enforced by the app. It is a thing worth checking in the live preview before you export, because a label that reads fine on its own can still land squarely on a divider once the two are on screen together.
All four are free, and always will be
Every comparison mode ships free and unlimited on every plan, along with every filter, all 83 stickers, the full label editor, your logo and business name, Ghost Camera, saved projects and all ten app languages. What the free tier actually limits is the export: three a day, each behind a rewarded ad, a watermark on the file, 9:16 and 1:1 ratios only, and Slider Reveal as the only reveal animation. None of that changes which comparison mode you are allowed to build with, only what the finished file looks like when it leaves the app.
You can test how a pair holds together as a Slider comparison before you commit to anything, using the free before and after slider on this site: drop both photographs in and drag the handle. It runs entirely in your browser and it will not show you Side by Side or Top / Bottom, since it is a single-mode demonstration rather than the editor, but it is the fastest way to check that a pair is worth building further.
Once you know which mode fits, a template just decides the frame, the colour and the label style around it. Minimal is a plain white frame from the Clean category that gets out of the way when the mode itself is doing the work, and Bold Coral from the Bold category is worth a look when the subject can carry more contrast. Every template respects whichever comparison mode you pick, so the order is always mode first, look second.
If the pair itself is not lining up cleanly regardless of which mode you try, that is a shooting problem rather than a mode problem, and it is worth fixing before you spend any more time in the editor. How to take matching before and after photos covers the five things to fix so a before and an after actually match. For the rest of the flow, from picking the photos through to exporting at the ratio your platform wants, see how to make a before and after video from two photos , and the full app details, including the complete free-versus-Pro split, are on the app page .
Common questions
- What's actually different between Slider and Side by Side?
- Slider puts one full frame on screen with a divider running through it, so the before and after occupy the same space and swap as the divider moves. Side by Side shows both photographs at once, full height, next to each other, so there is nothing to drag and nothing to miss, but each frame is only half as wide, which favours a tall or narrow subject over a wide one.
- Which comparison mode should I use for a wide subject like a driveway or a whole room?
- Top / Bottom. Squeezing a wide subject into the half-width frame that Slider or Side by Side gives you throws away the detail at the edges, which is usually where the actual work is. Stacking the two photographs keeps the full width of both, and it is the mode this site's own trade guides for pressure washing, landscaping and renovation all reach for.
- Do any of the four comparison modes cost extra?
- No. Slider, Side by Side, Top / Bottom and Tap to Switch are all free and unlimited on every plan. What is limited on the free tier is the export itself: three a day, a watermark on the file, 9:16 and 1:1 ratios only, and Slider Reveal as the only video reveal animation.
- Which comparison mode actually reaches a finished video today?
- Slider, reliably, under Slider Reveal, which is also the one reveal animation the free tier includes. Side by Side can reach video too on Pro, through the Zoom In reveal, whose whole animation is built around a side-by-side frame before it pushes in. Top / Bottom and Tap to Switch do not reach a video yet, because the video exporter currently takes its layout from the reveal animation you picked rather than from the comparison mode, and no reveal animation reproduces a stacked or tap-to-flip frame in motion. Build either of those two today and export a still image instead.
- Does the comparison mode affect where I can put a caption?
- Yes, because the mode decides where the hard line in the frame sits, and a caption in a preset position can end up sitting on top of it. Slider and Side by Side both put that line down the vertical centre, so a caption usually reads better in a bottom band than centred. Top / Bottom puts the line across the horizontal middle instead, so a top-band caption can crowd the seam. Tap to Switch has no line at all, since only one photograph is ever on screen, which makes it the easiest of the four to caption.