Image Compare - Image Comparison & Visual Diff Tool for Linux and Windows

Image Compare is a desktop image comparison and visual diff tool for Linux and Windows. It compares two or more images side by side, in a stacked view, or in a grid layout, and can generate perceptual heatmaps to highlight visual differences between two images.

Use it to compare different versions of the same image, choose the best-quality copy from multiple sources, check compression artifacts, inspect scans or image exports, compare edited or upscaled versions, and catch subtle changes in color, sharpness, cropping, scaling, or encoding.

Screenshot

Features

• Open images with drag-and-drop, the file picker, command-line arguments, or file manager Open With actions
• Compare two or more images side by side, stacked, or in a grid layout
• Synchronize zoom and pan across images, including images with different dimensions
• Use stacked view to flip between images in the same position for quick comparison
• Generate and export perceptual heatmaps from two images to highlight subtle visual differences
• Switch between embedded color-profile rendering and raw rendering
• Copy image paths, open containing folders, move images, and close files from pane context menus
• Load, zoom, and pan images efficiently with Qt6 and libvips

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
o	Open images
f	Toggle best fit / 100% zoom
v	Toggle stacked view
Arrow keys	Cycle images in stacked view
Enter	Focus the active image
h	Match zoom and pan
r	Toggle color-profile / raw rendering
b	Build heatmap
Ctrl+W	Close active pane
Ctrl+Left / Ctrl+Right	Move image left / right

Install

GitHub Releases

Download release builds from the GitHub Releases page.

Available release artifacts include:

• Linux DEB package for Debian and Ubuntu-based distributions
• Linux RPM package for Fedora and RPM-based distributions
• Linux install-tree zip
• Windows x86_64 portable zip
• Source tarball

Flathub

flatpak install flathub io.github.gimletlove.imagecompare

Arch Linux AUR

yay -S imagecompare-bin

Windows

Download imagecompare-<version>-windows-x86_64.zip from GitHub Releases, extract it, and run imagecompare.exe.

The Windows build is distributed as a portable zip with its runtime dependencies bundled.

Build from Source

Local source builds are intended for Linux. Windows packages are produced by the GitHub Actions release workflow.

Build requirements:

• C++20 compiler
• CMake 3.21+
• Qt6
• libvips and vips-cpp

Check installed dependency versions:

pkg-config --modversion Qt6Core
pkg-config --modversion vips
pkg-config --modversion vips-cpp

Build and run:

cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build
./build/imagecompare

Flatpak builds can enable portal integration with:

cmake -S . -B build-flatpak -DIMAGECOMPARE_FLATPAK=ON
cmake --build build-flatpak

Flatpak builds also require Qt6 DBus and KDE Frameworks 6 CoreAddons.

Project Links

• GitHub Releases: https://github.com/gimletlove/imagecompare/releases
• Flathub: https://flathub.org/apps/details/io.github.gimletlove.imagecompare
• Arch Linux AUR: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/imagecompare-bin