To "even out" the background... I use the circle cropping tool first and place it to fit the circumference of the scanned chip. Yes, this is the trickiest part of Photoshop and I wish there was a simple way to do this. However, while the circle tool is around the chip, go to IMAGE and select CROP. Then go to SELECT and click on INVERSE. (This reverses what is selected by the circle from everything within the circle to everything outside the circle.) Then go to EDIT and click on CLEAR. This eliminates all the background and leaves the chip image with white space around it, but you can change that white to other colors.

As for placing images side-by-side, you need to enlarge the CANVAS of the first image, in the horizontal direction, to double it's size. Then, open the second image, copy it to memory and go back to the first image and paste it to that image. You will have to move that image to fill-in the blank space, and of course you do all of this after you have done the other process, above, to both images.

Once you have the two images side-by-side, you will need to render them into a single image to save it as a jpeg file. On the LAYERS panel there is a triangle to the far right of the "LAYERS" tab. Click it and select FLATTEN IMAGE. This merges any and all layers into a single layer, which can be saved as a jpeg file.

Complicated? You bet, but play with it and learn. Photoshop is a great Program!

Jim