Add a border to an image
An even border in any colour or padding that fits a whole photo into a square or 4:5 post without the platform cropping it.
Width is a percentage of the image's short side, so a batch of different sizes all get a border that looks the same.
Drop JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, AVIF, GIF, BMP files here or paste from the clipboard.
Your files are processed on this device. Nothing is uploaded.
Padding is a border that is only as wide as it needs to be
Most people looking for a border want one specific thing: a landscape photo on a square feed without losing the edges. The answer is padding, not cropping. The photo keeps its full width and the space above and below is filled so the whole thing becomes the shape the platform expects.
That is what the pad options do. The minimum margin still applies on every side, so the photo never touches the edge of the frame and then whichever direction is short is filled out to the target shape.
Why 4:5 rather than square
A 4:5 portrait post takes up more of the screen than a square one as someone scrolls, which is why it is the shape photographers reach for. A landscape photo padded to 4:5 has more border than one padded to square, so it is a trade between screen space and how much of the frame is photo.
Print borders
For a photo going to print, an even white border mimics a mount and protects the image from being trimmed at the edges, which print shops do more often than they admit. Around 4 to 6% of the short side reads as a mount rather than a mistake.
Common questions
How do I post a whole photo to Instagram without it being cropped?
Pad it to the shape the feed wants. Choose pad to square for a 1:1 post or pad to portrait for 4:5, which is the tallest shape a feed post keeps without cropping. The photo is left whole and the short sides are filled with your border colour, so nothing is cut off.
Why is the border width a percentage rather than pixels?
So a batch of different sized photos all look the same. Twenty pixels is a heavy border on a small image and a hairline on a phone photo. A percentage of the short side gives every image the same visual weight regardless of resolution.
Does adding a border reduce quality?
The photo itself is placed pixel for pixel, not scaled, so no detail is lost to resizing. Saving as JPG re-compresses it once, which is what the quality control is for. A PNG stays lossless throughout.
Can I add a border to lots of photos at once?
Yes. Drop a folder and every image gets the same treatment, then download them together as a zip. Because the width scales with each image, a mixed batch comes out consistent.
Which border colour works best?
White for a gallery or print look, black for a moodier one and for a feed a colour pulled from the photo itself often looks most deliberate. The colour palette tool will give you the main colours of any image as hex codes you can paste into the colour picker here.
Guides
The other tools
All of them work the same way: the file is read in your browser and never uploaded.