Add Border or Change Background Colour

Why add a border?

A border does more than decorate. Some application forms and photo studios ask for a thin white border around passport photos. Printed photos with a margin are easier to trim neatly. Social media posts with a solid frame stand out in feeds, and adding space around an image lets it fit square formats without cropping.

Filling transparent backgrounds

PNG logos, stickers and cut-out images often have a transparent background, which turns black or chequered when uploaded to some forms or printed. With “fill transparent areas” turned on, the tool places your image on a solid colour, white by default, and saves it as a JPG that looks the same everywhere.

Choosing width and colour

• Passport-style photos: a thin white border of 5–15 pixels looks natural.
• Prints and posters: 3–5% of the image width gives a gallery-style margin.
• Social posts: brand colours or soft pastels work well; light blue and light grey are popular.

The border is added outside your photo, so nothing in the picture is covered, and the image grows by twice the border width in each direction.

Next steps

If a form needs a fixed size or file size afterwards, use the image resizer or the KB resizer. To make passport photo prints with borders, the passport photo maker has border options built in.

Private and instant

The preview updates as you move the slider, and everything happens on your device; your images are never uploaded.

Examples

• A product photo on a transparent background becomes a clean white-background image for marketplaces that require white backgrounds.
• A square Instagram post gets a thick pastel frame so a portrait photo fits without cropping.
• A passport-style photo gets a thin white border before printing, making it easier to cut accurately.

For precise print sizes, add the border first, then set the final size with the image resizer.