Bora Mustafa



LIGHTROOM - BATCH EXPORT WITH BORDERS TO FIT INSTAGRAM

March 21, 2020


Hi, I’m Bora. I’m a freelance Videographer, Video Editor and Photographer.

So I’ve edited a bunch of photos in Lightroom, and I want to export them for Instagram. The problem is, some of the shots are taller than 4 by 5, which is the maximum that Instagram allows.

I don’t want to crop my shots down, so the best solution is to add borders.

In this Lightroom tutorial, I’ll show you a way to do this to multiple images at once. This method will add a white border and export each image at 4 by 5, no matter how they’re cropped. Or, you might even choose to convert your shots to squares… Let’s get started.

  • Move your mouse to the top right of the screen and click on the ‘Print’ tab. Don’t worry, we won’t be printing anything to paper.

  • Now move your mouse to the right pane and scroll down to the ‘Print Job’ section at the bottom.

  • Change ‘Print to:’ from ‘Printer’ to ‘JPEG File’.

  • Uncheck ‘Print Sharpening’.

  • Set the ‘Jpeg Quality’ to ‘100’, or ‘80’, for reduced file sizes.

  • Check the ‘Custom File Dimensions:’ box.

  • Set the ‘Width’ to ‘8’ and the ‘Height’ to ’10’. This step can sometimes be buggy but keep trying until it works.

We’re using 8 by 10 here because it’s the equivalent of 4 by 5 and will give us a higher resolution image. If you’d like your images to turn out as squares, use 8 by 8.

  • Scroll back up to the top.

  • In the ‘Image Settings’ section, uncheck ‘Zoom to Fill’ and ‘Rotate to Fit’.

  • In the ’Layout’ section, move all the ‘Margins’ to the left until they show ‘0’.

  • Move the ‘Cell Size’, ‘Height’ and ‘Width’ sliders all the way to the right.

You can also try reducing the height and width a little bit. This’ll create a border that goes all the way around the image.

  • Click through your photos at the bottom to check how they look.

Lightroom export example

In the preview window, there will be a row of white pixels at the bottom of the image, but it won’t show up on the exported files.

  • Select the photos you’d like to export. You can click on one, then hold ‘Control’ and press ‘A’ to select all your photos.

BONUS TIP - If you need to deselect the photos, hold ‘Control’, then press ‘D’.

  • Now click ‘Print to File’ at the bottom of the right pane.

  • Create an empty folder where you’d like to save the images. The filenames of the photos will be the folder name, followed by a number.

  • Click ‘Select Folder’ and wait for the images to be exported. You’ll see a progress bar at the top right.

And there you have it, an easy way to batch export photos, making them 4:5 by adding a border in Lightroom.

To see how these photos look on Instagram, follow me @boramveli.

Otherwise check out my porfolio.

And until next time... Peace.



Click here to go back to the blog post list