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Add a Border to an Image
Photo borders in any colour — frame, pad and post, free.
- Runs on your device
- Gradient, texture and glow frames
- One image free · Batch with Pro
Drop an image here
or browse · one image on Free
Reads JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP and AVIF. Saves as PNG, JPG or WebP.
A starting point. Every control below stays adjustable.
Extra room below the photo, for a handwritten caption or a title.
The frame is added around the photo; your original pixels are never resized.
Pads the shorter side to reach the ratio. Nothing is ever cropped away.
Thin lines inside the frame. Up to three, drawn outward from the photo.
Why Add a Border to a Photo?
A border does two jobs at once. It separates the picture from whatever is behind it — a feed, a gallery grid, a white page — and it adds a deliberate edge that makes the shot look finished rather than cropped. It is also the quickest way to make a photo fit a layout it was never shot for.
What a Border Gives You
- Separation: a light photo on a light background stops dissolving into it.
- A finished edge: the frame reads as a decision rather than an accident of cropping.
- A consistent set: the same width and colour across a shop or a portfolio makes twenty photos look like one series.
- The right shape: padding a landscape shot to a square keeps the whole picture instead of cutting the sides off.
- Room for words: caption space below the photo leaves somewhere for a title or a handwritten note.
Frame Styles
The frame is the area around your photo, and it can be filled five different ways. They combine freely — a gradient frame with two rings and a shadow is one setting each.
- Solid colour One colour all the way round, at any opacity. White is the classic; a colour picked out of the photo itself ties the frame to the picture.
- Gradient Two colours blended across the frame, either along an angle you set or outward from the centre. The blend covers the whole canvas, so the frame shifts colour as it goes round the picture.
- Texture Another image used as the frame surface — paper, wood, marble, a pattern. It can tile at any scale, fill the frame while keeping its proportions, or stretch to fit exactly.
- Rings Up to three thin lines inside the frame, drawn outward from the photo, each with its own width, colour and line style. Solid, dashed and dotted are all measured around the real perimeter, so the dashes stay evenly spaced around a rounded corner instead of bunching up.
- Shadow A soft shadow cast by the photo onto the frame, with its own softness, offset, colour and strength. Set the offset to zero and turn the colour up and the same control becomes a glow.
Padding a Photo to a Post Shape
Social platforms crop anything that is not the shape they want. Padding solves it the other way round: the shorter side is filled out with frame until the ratio matches, so the whole picture survives and nothing is cut away.
- 1:1 square — the safe shape for a feed post and for most profile grids.
- 4:5 portrait — the tallest a feed post is shown at, so it takes up the most screen.
- 9:16 story — full-height for stories and reels; a landscape shot gains wide bands top and bottom.
- 16:9 landscape — for slides, thumbnails and page banners.
Pads the shorter side to reach the ratio. Nothing is ever cropped away.
How to Add a Border to an Image
- Drop your image in: JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP and AVIF are all read. Nothing is uploaded — it all runs on your device, not our servers.
- Start from a preset: Polaroid, square post, gallery mat, film edge, neon glow, gradient or hairline. Each one is a starting point; every control stays adjustable.
- Set the width and the colour: One width for all four sides, or a different one for each. Pick any colour, blend two into a gradient, or load an image as the frame texture.
- Shape it: Round the corners, add caption space below the photo, add up to three rings, and pad to a square or story ratio without cropping anything.
- Save it: PNG keeps transparency, JPG is the smallest, WebP sits between the two. A batch downloads as one archive.
How It Works
The canvas grows around your photo and the new area is filled with the style you chose. Your original pixels are placed at their natural size on a whole-pixel boundary, so nothing inside the frame is ever resampled or softened.
What happens to your file
- Read: the image is decoded on your device, with any camera rotation applied.
- Measure: the frame width, caption space and target shape are turned into padding for each of the four sides.
- Draw: the fill, the shadow, the photo and the rings are composited in one pass, with the edges antialiased rather than stair-stepped.
- Save: the result is encoded to PNG, JPG or WebP and handed straight to your downloads.
The whole composite runs on your device's graphics hardware in a single pass, so a 12-megapixel photo is framed in well under a tenth of a second and the preview keeps up with the slider.
Common Uses
The same tool covers very different jobs depending on which controls you reach for.
Instagram and TikTok
Pad a landscape or an odd-sized shot to 1:1, 4:5 or 9:16 so the platform shows all of it. A white frame is the default look; a colour pulled from the photo makes a grid feel designed.
Photography portfolios
A wide mat with a hairline ring around the picture is the gallery convention, and a faint shadow lifts the print off the wall. The gallery mat preset is exactly that, ready to adjust.
Product photos
One width and one colour applied across a whole batch makes a catalogue look consistent, and every image downloads together as a single archive.
Prints and scrapbooks
Caption space below the photo leaves room to write underneath, which is what makes the Polaroid look work rather than a plain white edge.
Slides and documents
A thin dark ring separates a screenshot from a white page far better than a drop shadow does, and it survives being printed.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I add a white border to a photo for Instagram?
Drop the photo in, choose the square post preset, and the shorter side is padded with white until the picture is 1:1. Nothing is cropped — the whole photo is still there, sitting inside a white frame. Change the colour or the width if you want a different look, then save as JPG for the smallest file.
Can I set a different border width on each side?
Yes. Turn off "same width on all four sides" and each edge gets its own slider. This is what you want for letterboxing, for an asymmetric mat, or for leaving extra room along one edge. Caption space is a separate control that adds to the bottom only.
How do I add a gradient border instead of a solid colour?
Set the frame fill to Gradient, pick a start and an end colour, and set the angle. The blend runs across the whole canvas at that angle, so the frame changes colour as it travels round the photo. Radial does the same thing outward from the centre instead.
Does adding a border change the pixel dimensions of my image?
Yes — the output is larger, because the canvas grows by the border width on each side. A 20 px border around a 1000x1000 photo produces a 1040x1040 result, and the rail shows the exact output size before you save. If you need the file to stay within its original dimensions, switch the canvas control to "never exceed the original size" and the whole frame is scaled down to fit.
Will a border on a transparent PNG keep the transparency?
Yes, as long as you save as PNG or WebP. The transparent parts of your image stay transparent, and if you lower the frame's opacity the frame itself becomes see-through too. JPG has no transparency at all, so anything see-through is saved as black — the tool warns you before you save.
Can I apply the same border to several photos at once?
Pro queues up to 100 images and applies the same settings to all of them, then hands them back as a single archive rather than 100 separate downloads. Free frames one image at a time, with every styling control — gradient, texture, rings, shadow, caption space — fully available.
Is the photo re-compressed when I add a border?
The pixels inside the frame are never resized or shifted by a fraction of a pixel, so they stay exactly as sharp as they came in. The file is re-encoded on the way out, which is unavoidable for any image editor; choose PNG if you want that encode to be lossless.
What is the maximum border width?
Up to 400 px, or up to 50% of the photo's shorter side if you switch the unit to percent. Percent is the better choice for a batch of mixed sizes, because a 6% frame looks the same on a phone snap and on a 40-megapixel file, where a fixed 40 px would not.
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