Add a clean border around a photo for print or post

Prints need breathing room; feeds crop edge-to-edge. A uniform border in any colour, added without touching the photo.

Tools used in this guide

The job

Print labs crop to the edge — content near the border gets trimmed. A border shifts the image inward. Same story for framed posts: a 5% white border reads as intentional, a cropped one as accidental.

Size and colour

Set the border in pixels — 0 to 2,000 per side — or switch to percentage-of-image mode so the border scales with the photo. The colour picker sets it; white, black and the sampled edge colours are the usual answers.

Percentage mode answers '5% white border' regardless of resolution — the pixel count changes per image, the look stays.
Output keeps your image's format (PNG/JPEG/WebP) — border colour just becomes the new pixels.

Border vs padding

A border is a deliberate frame; padding is transparent space. If you're compositing and need alpha, use image-padding instead — this paints a solid colour.