Add a white border to a photo for Instagram

Six border styles: solid, polaroid, drop shadow, rounded, double line and film strip. Set the thickness in pixels or as a percentage of the frame.

Drop your files here

.jpg, .jpeg, .png, .webp · up to 50 MB

Choose files

How to Add Border

1
Add your image
JPG, PNG or WebP, up to 100 files at once. Photos taken on a phone are rotated upright first, so the border lands on the right sides.
2
Pick a style and a colour
Set the thickness in pixels or as a percentage of the shorter side, and decide whether the canvas should grow or stay the same size.
3
Click Add border and download
One file comes back on its own; several arrive as pulsarkit-bordered.zip.

What 8 percent means

The page opens with “Solid” under “Border style”, white as the color and 8 under “Border thickness”. The slider shows a bare number; the unit sits under “More settings”, where “Thickness measured in” reads “Percent of the shorter side”. Every edge gets a band 8 percent of the shorter side wide, rounded to whole pixels, and the canvas grows around the photo. A 1280 × 800 photo gets 64 pixels and comes out at 1408 × 928; a 4000 × 3000 photo gets 240 and becomes 4480 × 3480. The slider goes higher, but anything above 25 percent is drawn as 25.

An even frame, not a square

The band is the same on all four sides, so a landscape photo stays landscape and a tall one stays tall. For a square post, the row of next tools hands the framed photo to Resize Image: pick “Preset” under “Set size by”, then “Instagram post (1080×1080)”, with “Fit” under “More settings” left on “Contain (add padding)”. A JPEG then gets white bars that merge with the frame. This needs a framed photo of at least 1080 pixels on each side, like the 4480 × 3480 example; a smaller one keeps its size, because the preset does not enlarge.

Format and file size

A JPEG stays a JPEG, a PNG stays a PNG and a WebP stays a WebP, named after the original with -border added. A JPEG is saved at quality 92, so the weight can go either way: a flat white band costs little, but a photo that a phone or a messenger had already compressed hard may come back heavier. In our check on October 20, 2026, the 1280 × 800 photo came out at 1408 × 928 with the 8 percent frame, 64 pixels on each side; its weight went from 86 kB to 75 kB. If a site caps the weight, Compress Image is first in the row of next tools.

Framing a photo on a phone

On a phone, tap the drop zone and pick the photo from the camera roll; the frame is drawn by the phone's browser, so the original stays on the device. On an iPhone the download opens the Share sheet, where Save Image puts the framed photo in Photos; Android saves it to Downloads. A HEIC photo is not accepted here; convert it in HEIC to JPG first. Several photos can take the same frame in one go, and each band follows its own photo's size.

Your photo stays in the browser

The image is decoded, framed and re-encoded on your own device using WebAssembly codecs. It is never uploaded, there is nothing to delete afterwards, and the EXIF block is not copied into the result. Camera model, timestamp and any GPS coordinates are dropped when the bordered file is written.

Frequently asked questions

Is my photo uploaded to a server?

No. Reading the file, decoding it, drawing the border and encoding it again all happen in this browser tab. There is no upload and no server-side copy.

Does adding a border change the size of the image?

By default yes: the canvas grows by twice the border thickness plus twice the padding on each axis, so the photo itself is untouched and the file gets larger. A 20 pixel border on a 2647 by 1489 photo gives 2687 by 1529.

How do I keep the original pixel size?

Turn off "Grow the canvas". The output measures exactly what the input did; the photo is scaled down to fit inside the border and centred. Use this when a platform expects an exact size and would otherwise re-crop your upload.

Why did my JPEG come back as a PNG?

Because the result has transparent pixels, and JPEG has no alpha channel. Rounded corners, drop shadows and a solid border with a corner radius all leave transparency in the corners; writing that as JPEG would fill it with black. The tool switches to PNG and tells you it did.

Can I put a caption under the photo?

Yes, with the Polaroid style. The caption goes in the wide bottom margin, centred, at forty percent of the margin height, and is trimmed to forty characters. It is drawn in the system sans-serif of whatever device is doing the work.

How many files can I frame at once?

Up to 100 files, 300 MB in total. All of them get the same style and settings, and the results come back as pulsarkit-bordered.zip. Percentage thickness is often the better choice for a batch, because it adapts to each photo's own dimensions.

What is the maximum border thickness?

200 pixels, or 25 percent of the shorter side. A border thicker than 45 percent of the shorter side is refused outright. At that point the photo is a stamp in the middle of a coloured rectangle, and the tool suggests the largest thickness that still leaves a picture.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. Solid, polaroid, rounded, double and film strip are essentially instant. Drop shadow costs more because of the blur: under a second on a typical photo, a few seconds on a very large one at maximum blur.