Legacy ImageMagick Discussions Archive

I am not sure if I am in the right forum. I purchased the LR/Mogrify2 software last year to specifically put a border around my pictures and put a caption at the bottom of the image in a white space. I had 400 slide images I wanted to print. This was a very frustrating tedious task. As you cannot see the photo until it is exported, I was constantly having to make readjustments to make the text fit the border. It also cropped many of my images by adding the borders. I thought when I added the borders the picture would fit inside the border. This never worked. I ended up using a larger border on the bottom without any other borders so my picture would not be cropped. I tried using the "canvas" feature, it did not seem to work the way it was described. I would send you some images I produced to show you what I mean, but I don't think I can add a jpeg to this post.

What I am asking for is step by step instructions on how to use the image caption with an equal border on 3 sides and a larger border on the bottom or top to accommodate a caption for a 4 x 6 print. I am fine with the image being shrunk but not cropped to accommodate the borders as long as the complete size of the picture including the borders is 4 x 6. That way when I send it to a photo lab the image does not get cropped.

I have Lightroom 4 on my Mac iOS X 10.7.5

I was directed by Photographer's Toolbox and I quote:
Q: How do I use Mogrify?
A: Please don't contact me! Contact ImageMagick's support.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you, Heidi

You have a complicated issue because of your requirements. It would be best if you can post an example image. You can post it to any free image hosting site such as dropbox and then put a link here.

Are all your images the same size and all the same orientation (landscape vs portrait)?

Here are some issues and comments as I see them

1) I have no knowledge of how Lightroom/Mogrify works nor its syntax. I assume it uses IM mogrify command.

2) IM does not work directly in inches such as 4x6. It works in pixels which can be assigned a density (pixels per inch). So you will need to do the computation.

3)However, we can assume the 4x6 is a measure of the width to height aspect ratio (2:3), which would indicate that your images are portrait. But perhaps you have both portrait and landscape pictures which complicates things, since you want an unequal border

4) But we have no idea if your pictures are already 2:3 aspect ratio. If they are not, that complicates things since you do not want any cropping nor I assume any padding.

5) Thus to achieve this, one must compute the aspect ratio of your images and figure out how to add borders such that the final aspect ratio is 2:3.

6) Once you know that, you can use -border to add an equal border of the needed size around the whole image and then put any remaining excess on the bottom using -splice. Or alternately, create a background image of the border color and correct size and composite the image over the background.

7) Then you need to add your text in the right location and with the correct size to fit the added border.

8 ) Mogrify does not allow calculations in-line, so you need to do them ahead of time. That will complicated things for you, if all your images are not the same size and orientation.


Examples can be provided in IM command line form using mogrify, once we get an example image and you answer the questions about your images orientations.