It’s easy to create simple black, white or transparent photo borders in Lightroom, using the Effects panel in the Develop module.
The Effects panel is on the right side, towards the bottom of your panels. Set the Style to Paint Overlay, so that highlights don’t show through your border.
1. Black film-style border
Set Amount to -100, Midpoint to 0, Roundness to -100 and Feather to 0.
Classic Black Film-Style Black Border
2. White border
Set Amount to +100, Midpoint to 0, Roundness to -100 and Feather to 0.
White Border: Amount set to +100. (Note that thin black frame is not part of the result.)
3. Wider border
Increase Roundness:
Increase Roundness to Widen Border
4. Softer Border
Increase the Feather Setting to soften the border edge:
5. Transparent Border
Set Amount to any value greater than 0 and less than 100:
Adjust Amount Setting to Make Border Transparent
Some of you will be excited by this functionality, and some of you will be disappointed that there isn’t more flexibility — for example, to create squared-off corners, colored borders, and multiple borders. Timothy Armes has written a Lightroom plug-in, LR/Mogrify 2 that allows one to create more sophisticated borders as you export copies of your photos:
Alternatively, you could design a layout with borders using the Print module, and print your result to JPEG rather than to your printer. Stay tuned for a future post on easy ways to do this.
[sc:signup]Related Posts:
Creating Cool Photo Layouts Using the Print Module
Hi Laura:
Nice little trick to make frames, thanks.
I noticed a probable typo in the instructions.
1. Black border the “Set Amount” should be -100 (it shows that on the graphic of the sliders) not +100 as written.
I couldn’t figure out how to make the border black until I just randomly tried resetting the “Amount” from +100 to -100.
Again, thanks so much for all you do!
Aloha from Maui
Thanks for the heads up, Neil!!
Excelents tips. Thanks very much Laura.
Thank you Laura, you are a saviour ;)
Is there a way to add this border to the outside of the photo??
You could use the Print module, Melissa. There is a “photo border”, and you can make your image smaller than the page and change the page background color.
can i make square border with shadow..pls
No, Mohmed. You may want to check out the LR / Mogrify plug-in for more border options.
I’m trying to do a white boarder around my picture with my logo in the boarder. I’m new to LR and have no idea how to do this. I don’t even know how to get to the print module. Please help!
Hi Claudia, you can access the Print module in the top right of Lightroom. There you can add up to a 20 pixel (stroke) border (i.e. not very wide), and you can add a logo by using the identity plate feature. However, I can’t explain here all the details of how to accomplish this.
I would suggest checking out the Mogrify plugin that I mention in the article – it has more functionality, as well as complete documentation.