lightroom-black-film-borderIt’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.

Lightroom Black Film-Style Border

Classic Black Film-Style Black Border

2. White border

Set Amount to +100, Midpoint to 0, Roundness to -100 and Feather to 0.

Lightroom White Photo Border

White Border: Amount set to +100. (Note that thin black frame is not part of the result.)

3. Wider border

Increase Roundness:

Lightroom Wider Photo Border

Increase Roundness to Widen Border

4. Softer Border

Increase the Feather Setting to soften the border edge:

Lightroom Soft-Edged Border

5. Transparent Border

Set Amount to any value greater than 0 and less than 100:

Adjust Amount Setting to Make Border Transparent

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:

Lightroom Mogrify Plugin

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.

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Related Posts:

Printing to JPEG

Creating Cool Photo Layouts Using the Print Module