"Simple" Black Border / Landscape vs. Portrait, etc.

KG
Posted By
Kevin_G._Sullivan
Aug 18, 2004
Views
1119
Replies
4
Status
Closed
I have 1000’s of digital photos, various sizes, resolutions, etc.

I would like to add a plain black border around them as a batch because they are being cropped in my DVD slide show program.

I’ve tried using the process, "open photo, select all, cut, increase canvas size to 120% x 120%, fill black, paste photo back in, flatten, save."

PS cannot perform this set of actions consistently because 120% varies based on the actual size of the photo. (I guess it remembers the dimensions of the photo I recorded the initial action on?)

Bottom line: I would like to have 1 automated set of actions that can add a black border to a photo regardless of landscape, portrait, or photo size.

Thanks,

Kevin
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C
cjfn
Aug 18, 2004
I haven’t tried this but if you are using CS you should be able to handle this through the "Actions" tool. (In my copy it appears next to the History panel on the right side of the screen.) In fact, although I haven’t recorded any actions myself, I notice there is a border action in the list already.

Hope that helps.

cjfn
Y
YrbkMgr
Aug 18, 2004
There are a bunch of ways to do it, but presuming that you only want to add a "frame" without affecting the inner picture size you can try this.

In your action make sure that you convert the background to a layer by Alt Double Clicking the background layer. Then use Image|Canvas Size… set it to "Relative" and then set the amount of increase to "Percent". Add 10 or 20% to the canvas size. Then have your action record "Ctrl Click" on the layer – that will select the visible pixels. Then Select|Inverse, then fill with black, and flatten.

Peace,
Tony
LB
lord_bunny
Aug 18, 2004
Have you tried selecting the RELATIVE check box when you’re adjusting the CANVAS SIZE? It’s right below the input boxes. I do this for matting pictures when I can’t work with bleeds. I add a .5 relative height and width. It will in turn give me a consistent .25 inch border on all sides regardless of the page orientation.

wrote in message news:…
RK
Ronald_Keller
Aug 19, 2004
Kevin,

PS cannot perform this set of actions consistently because 120% varies based on the actual size of the photo. (I guess it remembers the dimensions of the photo I recorded the initial action on?)

Not sure if I understand you correctly here. Do you want it to be 120% or do you want a fixed amount of pixels?

In case of the former it works as expected in CS but I seem vaguely to remember that in earlier versions you had to set the ruler units to percent prior to recording the action.
In case of the latter I have an action to increase the canvas by a number of pixels. (It will need some minor tweaking for your specific need.) I can email it to you if you like (click my name if you need my email)
Basically the steps are:
select all
save selection
canvas size 150% (not necessarily 150, only big enough)
load saved selection
expand by xx pixels
trim
deselect

Ronald

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