Skip to main content

⚠️ Please note that this topic or post has been archived. The information contained here may no longer be accurate or up-to-date. ⚠️

Adding a black border to exported images

MAS
Hi,

brief and simple question:

Part of my workflow is to add a black border around my photos, where I do place my name and email address as white text. What sounds easy I don't get managed in CO7. It is three clicks in Aperture (e.g. BorderFX plugin), it is easy in Lightroom, but what about CO7?

I was thinking about 'misusing' the batch processing feature, where I can define watermarks. Here my plan was to pre-produce dedicated frames for the different variants I plan to export (e.g. different sizes). Problem: Depending whether photos are upright or normal, this work or it works not. Marking all upright photos, processing those first before the other photos sounds not really convenient to me.

For the moment I need to use an external third party software to do so... However, this is not really what I prefer.

I'm sure there is a much smarter way to do that, isn't it?

BR,
Marius
0

Comments

14 comments

Date Votes
  • jknights
    How about making a processing recipe for vertical and horizontal output with the two different signed border templates being applied?

    I do find the limitations of the output process need considerable improvement before being fit for professional use.
    0
  • SFA
    This sort of subject is one of those "where do we stop" questions I think. More graphics creation than photo editing per se and once you head down that road you are into textures and borders and styles and on and on ... There is an entire section of the industry out there will and able to sell specialist packages for specialist needs and the chances are that most RAW conversion software developers would be struggling to keep up even if they caught up.

    That said I could see an opportunity somewhere in the product portfolio for an option to include a border design in the output process, possibly by going through an external program to save the pain of developing a classical yet basic solution and then having the world and its offspring complaining that it's not enough and so leaving the functionality to become a distracting "deal breaker" for all the trialists.

    Anyway, I thought that is what Instagram was for ... adding border and textures to images. Did I get that wrong?



    😉



    Grant
    0
  • MAS
    Grant, you brought it on the point quite good. Of course that's true. Anyhow, at least the capability of allowing to add plugins from third parties to do something like this, is something I miss.
    0
  • Keith Reeder
    [quote="jknights" wrote:
    I do find the limitations of the output process need considerable improvement before being fit for professional use.

    In terms of what defines "professional" software, I'd put little things like excellent demosaicing, functional highlight recovery, working noise reduction, and a general lack of IQ-destroying bugs over the ability to add a border to an image...
    0
  • SFA
    [quote="thephaser" wrote:
    Grant, you brought it on the point quite good. Of course that's true. Anyhow, at least the capability of allowing to add plugins from third parties to do something like this, is something I miss.


    I'm not sure about this subject specifically but from memory C1 does have an SDK that developers could use to plug-in to the application.

    If I understood things correctly this is what ProPhoto use to obtain interaction with their lighting systems. Whether it would extend to printing borders (where the printer driver is also in play) I have no idea but I would guess
    it might cover stuff like creating an output file.

    There is one way I can think of that looks like it might work so long as one was prepared to do some controlled setup work before making the output (and if you have a suitable 'Printer' to allow creation of the file type of your choice....)

    Marius,

    One option you might want to try is to create both portrait and Landscape versions of your watermark border and a Recipe for each version. You might then be able to set the required recipe for each image as you process it and then send it off to the background batch process while you continue to the next image. Or maybe sort by width or height and process in batches? (That probably would not work for me so well because I tend not to fit to fixed sizes - you may be the same?).

    I wonder if it would be quite simple in programming terms to invert the image/watermark process and print a watermark with the required image overlaid on it? This seems to work in principle for a one-off file although I have yet check output quality and how consistently the idea can be applied.



    Grant
    0
  • jknights
    [quote="SFA" wrote:
    [quote="thephaser" wrote:
    Grant, you brought it on the point quite good. Of course that's true. Anyhow, at least the capability of allowing to add plugins from third parties to do something like this, is something I miss.


    I'm not sure about this subject specifically but from memory C1 does have an SDK that developers could use to plug-in to the application.


    Grant


    My understanding of the SDK when I asked about obtaining it was that it is a paid for item and that it has very limited functionality.

    IMHO the SDK should be free and available to all who wish to develop add-ons to COPro.
    This works very well for the Bibble and Corel AfterShotPro products. In fact these products would be just another also ran RAW software but for the plug-ins developed by third party developers using their SDK.
    0
  • SFA
    [quote="jknights" wrote:
    [quote="SFA" wrote:
    [quote="thephaser" wrote:
    Grant, you brought it on the point quite good. Of course that's true. Anyhow, at least the capability of allowing to add plugins from third parties to do something like this, is something I miss.


    I'm not sure about this subject specifically but from memory C1 does have an SDK that developers could use to plug-in to the application.


    Grant


    My understanding of the SDK when I asked about obtaining it was that it is a paid for item and that it has very limited functionality.

    IMHO the SDK should be free and available to all who wish to develop add-ons to COPro.
    This works very well for the Bibble and Corel AfterShotPro products. In fact these products would be just another also ran RAW software but for the plug-ins developed by third party developers using their SDK.


    On the other hand ...

    I have noticed that some of the better known plug-in developers (Or at least those that have not been bought out by Google, et al. 😉 ) have been steadily moving towards integrating their products and making them available as "stand alones" with quite comprehensive UIs. They no longer rely on Adobe or, for some, Aperture users to make their marketplace for them - albeit whether heading that way will make them more successful, less successful or simply allow them to tread water may be a question as yet unanswered.


    Some of them appear to be getting closer and closer to doing more stuff with RAW files at some level although of course how they then progress the maths in play towards the ability to store the results and do something with them for output purposes is another matter. Presumably you either keep and edit instruction file and apply it to the RAW file on demand of you write out a fully modified 8bit jpg - complete with lens corrections of course. Which, for the mass market user, is pretty much the end result you can obtain from web based services and a half decent mobile phone .


    Back in the day Corel were a huge player in the Graphics Processing market as it was at the time. But that was when it was about graphics in office documents and before Adobe somehow got their act together. If ASP is surviving mainly on the basis that other people write plug-ins that will work with it one has to wonder how it has come to that.

    The odd think about plug-ins, in so far as I understand them, is that they surely cannot do anything that the application they plug into could not also do. What they pass back to the host file is something the host file has to be capable of storing. Just data within certain constraints. It might mean cleverly manipulated data values with some intuitive and powerful UI features (or maybe not sometimes) but in the end it is just data output with altered values or an adjustment matrix to be applied to whatever 'RAW data based information' has been extracted from the original sensor data blob. Or, more typically, some sort of modification to the values that are used to derive output from a jpg file.

    I can see the attraction for plugin developers when they can use the facilities traditionally created for Graphics manipulation and drawing programs where the work is fundamentally created from many structures or layers and the application can fairly easily (if the developer allow it) accommodate an incoming layer that can be read and applied to the edit stack just like any other adjustment. (I may be out of touch on this but I assume that the plugins had to hand back just a single adjustment 'layer' rather then the multiple layers that may have been used to derive the value changes?) .

    On the other hand the potential for basic borders (to return to the OP subject matter) seems simpler in that it is really closer to the merging of 2 files at output/print time and most probably not something that needs to be written back into an active edit file for future use during further editing.

    At the very simplest level it is really a matter of using existing 'border' management facilities and allowing the output resulting to be coloured and shaded or controlled for output in some other way - a combination of lines for example or some sort of file to be used within a border mask not unlike an alternative watermark if one allows text to be added.

    Something for the developers to consider.


    Grant
    0
  • Rick Allen
    this could be achieved with a background applescript calling imagemagick.

    Install imagemagick http://cactuslab.com/imagemagick/

    Create a scpt file and place in the BackgroundScripts folder

    on CO_BatchJobFinished(jobUUID, rawFilePath, outputPathList)
    if (class of outputPathList is list) then
    repeat with itemPath in outputPathList
    do shell script "/opt/ImageMagick/bin/convert " & quoted form of itemPath & " -bordercolor black -border 10%x10% " & itemPath
    do shell script "/opt/ImageMagick/bin/convert " & quoted form of itemPath & " ~/Desktop/watermark.gif " & "-alpha on -compose dissolve -define compose:args=70 -gravity South -composite " & itemPath
    end repeat
    end if
    end CO_BatchJobFinished


    I've not test this and it will need customisation but you get the idea.
    0
  • MAS
    I wanted to thank you all for your suggestions.

    I've tried those watermark trick as well, but for me it doesn't work as some images became smaller once you need to adjust the rotation.

    What I wasn't thinking about is the trick with the script. This sounds like a solution and I'll give it a try.

    So thanks very much!
    0
  • MAS
    Could someone give me a small hint please, how to generate this script after I've installed the respective software?

    Is there also any GUI for this software around? It's not that I'm not fine with doing things in Terminal, but it's ... ehm... a little old- school? For instance I'm even struggling with finding the folder I should create this script to. I'm sure it's somewhere in the System folder, but hell where?

    Thx in advance. 🤭 😭
    0
  • Graham-Hill
    I agree ++ with the interest of borders around the pictures. I posted a support case a few days ago. Did you too?
    0
  • Rick Allen
    [quote="MAS" wrote:
    Could someone give me a small hint please, how to generate this script after I've installed the respective software?

    Is there also any GUI for this software around? It's not that I'm not fine with doing things in Terminal, but it's ... ehm... a little old- school? For instance I'm even struggling with finding the folder I should create this script to. I'm sure it's somewhere in the System folder, but hell where?

    Thx in advance. 🤭 😭


    Open applscript editor copy paste the code I provided save the script file to you background scripts folder within capture one. To find this folder choose open scripts folder in the applescript menu item within CO. update the menu once its installed and then process as you normally would. to process without the border just move the script file out of the background folder and choose update.
    0
  • MAS
    Thanx for helping.

    Well, I tried it but have problems.

    1. I've installed ImageMagick.
    2. I've did the script-thing with Apple Script, placing it in the folder.
    3. I've finally found that menu entry in CO (thanks to your advise).
    4. Upon execution CO shows a longer error message (unfortunately it seems I cannot attach screenshots here). Note, I've placed a file called 'watermark.gif' for test purposes on my desktop, which didn't change anything.
    0
  • MAS
    Here is an URL to the screenshot pf the error message I got:

    http://img5.fotos-hochladen.net/thumbnail/screenshotyrh6l31g5b_thumb.jpg
    0

Post is closed for comments.