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.
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.