can you export a panorama with black added top and bottom?

Instagram crops panoramas, and I'm guessing that the best it will display is 16:9. So I'm wondering if DXO 4 Elite can export a panorama but with black (or white) space added top and bottom to give an image that is not going to be cut by Instagram? Conversely if there's an easy way of me creating that kind of image before exporting as a normal JPG?

Mike

I'm curious why you would be editing a stitched panorama in PhotoLab? You can't shoot raw panoramas, and PhotoLab doesn't stitch panoramas. So I'm assuming this is an in-camera panorama JPEG which you are enhancing in PhotoLab?

But to answer your question, no, I don't think PL can add white or black strips to the canvas. Surely your Mac has other software that can do it — it's a pretty basic function for a pixel editor.

If I was doing it, I'd use Affinity Photo, but lots of other products could do it equally well.

Digital Nigel said:

I'm curious why you would be editing a stitched panorama in PhotoLab? You can't shoot raw panoramas, and PhotoLab doesn't stitch panoramas. So I'm assuming this is an in-camera panorama JPEG which you are enhancing in PhotoLab?

But to answer your question, no, I don't think PL can add white or black strips to the canvas. Surely your Mac has other software that can do it — it's a pretty basic function for a pixel editor.

If I was doing it, I'd use Affinity Photo, but lots of other products could do it equally well.

Click to expand...

My bad - it's a panoramic shaped crop from a perfectly normal raw image processed in DXO. I have affinity - do I somehow create (say) a black layer that is the right size for Instagram then another layer that contains the very wide jpg exported from DXO, past one on top of the other then somehow consolidate them as one image then export?

This is the image. (instagram chops it down by at least 1/3)

Mike







--
please check out my photos at https://www.flickr.com/gp/186219788@N05/487L56

mike5100 said:

Digital Nigel said:

I'm curious why you would be editing a stitched panorama in PhotoLab? You can't shoot raw panoramas, and PhotoLab doesn't stitch panoramas. So I'm assuming this is an in-camera panorama JPEG which you are enhancing in PhotoLab?

But to answer your question, no, I don't think PL can add white or black strips to the canvas. Surely your Mac has other software that can do it — it's a pretty basic function for a pixel editor.

If I was doing it, I'd use Affinity Photo, but lots of other products could do it equally well.

Click to expand...

My bad - it's a panoramic shaped crop from a perfectly normal raw image processed in DXO. I have affinity - do I somehow create (say) a black layer that is the right size for Instagram then another layer that contains the very wide jpg exported from DXO, past one on top of the other then somehow consolidate them as one image then export?

This is the image. (instagram chops it down by at least 1/3)

Mike

Click to expand...

I have to admit that I know nothing about posting on Instagram. But a swift Google suggests that the optimum size for posting landscape images is 1080x608 (https://later.com/blog/instagram-image-size/).

The good news is that it's really easy to do this from PL. First crop the image using a 16:9 crop. This will, presumably, include areas at the top and bottom that you want to hide. There's a really easy way to do this in PL: use graduated filters top and bottom, with a minimal graduated zone, and with exposure set to minimum (-4.0). The screen will look something like this:


Using graduated filters to mask out the top and bottom bands on the screen

Then, export with a maximum width of 1080:


The top and bottom black bands were created with graduated filters

You can, of course, use other effects, such as a graduated transition to the black bands:


Graduated bands top and bottom

You could also try simply cropping to taste and exporting with a width of 1080. That would mean that the height would be less than 608; I don't know what Instagram would do with such images, but you could experiment.

Thanks Nigel - I will try that.

Mike

Digital Nigel said:

You could also try simply cropping to taste and exporting with a width of 1080. That would mean that the height would be less than 608; I don't know what Instagram would do with such images, but you could experiment.

Click to expand...

Instagram works best with an image width of exactly 1080 pixels. Height can range from 566 pixels to 1350 pixels.

Do you use Windows or Mac? If Mac, the Preview app has a markup tool that lets you adjust the size of an image, putting borders around it.

Mark Scott Abeln said:

Digital Nigel said:

You could also try simply cropping to taste and exporting with a width of 1080. That would mean that the height would be less than 608; I don't know what Instagram would do with such images, but you could experiment.

Click to expand...

Instagram works best with an image width of exactly 1080 pixels. Height can range from 566 pixels to 1350 pixels.

Do you use Windows or Mac? If Mac, the Preview app has a markup tool that lets you adjust the size of an image, putting borders around it.

Click to expand...

As a non-user of Instagram, I'm surprised just how small the photos are, considering that it's an image-oriented app.

Mark Scott Abeln said:

Digital Nigel said:

You could also try simply cropping to taste and exporting with a width of 1080. That would mean that the height would be less than 608; I don't know what Instagram would do with such images, but you could experiment.

Click to expand...

Instagram works best with an image width of exactly 1080 pixels. Height can range from 566 pixels to 1350 pixels.

Do you use Windows or Mac? If Mac, the Preview app has a markup tool that lets you adjust the size of an image, putting borders around it.

Click to expand...

Hah - thought I was going senile - couldn't make this work after realising that you weren't talking about the MAC OS Preview, and then downloading Preview Planner for Instagram on to my phone. There was no sign of the option to add frames so I went on the developer's site and it currently says this:

"NOTE: The borders are not available in Preview anymore. We are working on brand new borders. You can still use Preview to plan your feed in advance, use our beautiful filters, and find the best hashtags. If you are looking for borders some alternative apps we recommend are Instasize, Pic Stitch and Photo Collage."

.... so I will try Instasize.

Mike

mike5100 said:

Mark Scott Abeln said:

Digital Nigel said:

You could also try simply cropping to taste and exporting with a width of 1080. That would mean that the height would be less than 608; I don't know what Instagram would do with such images, but you could experiment.

Click to expand...

Instagram works best with an image width of exactly 1080 pixels. Height can range from 566 pixels to 1350 pixels.

Do you use Windows or Mac? If Mac, the Preview app has a markup tool that lets you adjust the size of an image, putting borders around it.

Click to expand...

Hah - thought I was going senile - couldn't make this work after realising that you weren't talking about the MAC OS Preview, and then downloading Preview Planner for Instagram on to my phone. There was no sign of the option to add frames so I went on the developer's site and it currently says this:

"NOTE: The borders are not available in Preview anymore. We are working on brand new borders. You can still use Preview to plan your feed in advance, use our beautiful filters, and find the best hashtags. If you are looking for borders some alternative apps we recommend are Instasize, Pic Stitch and Photo Collage."

.... so I will try Instasize.

Click to expand...

Why not just crop to 16:9 in PL, and export with a width of 1080? As I showed, you can create black (or white) bands at the edges very easily if your preferred image crop has a more extreme aspect ratio.

Digital Nigel said:

mike5100 said:

Mark Scott Abeln said:

Digital Nigel said:

You could also try simply cropping to taste and exporting with a width of 1080. That would mean that the height would be less than 608; I don't know what Instagram would do with such images, but you could experiment.

Click to expand...

Instagram works best with an image width of exactly 1080 pixels. Height can range from 566 pixels to 1350 pixels.

Do you use Windows or Mac? If Mac, the Preview app has a markup tool that lets you adjust the size of an image, putting borders around it.

Click to expand...

Hah - thought I was going senile - couldn't make this work after realising that you weren't talking about the MAC OS Preview, and then downloading Preview Planner for Instagram on to my phone. There was no sign of the option to add frames so I went on the developer's site and it currently says this:

"NOTE: The borders are not available in Preview anymore. We are working on brand new borders. You can still use Preview to plan your feed in advance, use our beautiful filters, and find the best hashtags. If you are looking for borders some alternative apps we recommend are Instasize, Pic Stitch and Photo Collage."

.... so I will try Instasize.

Click to expand...

Why not just crop to 16:9 in PL, and export with a width of 1080? As I showed, you can create black (or white) bands at the edges very easily if your preferred image crop has a more extreme aspect ratio.

Click to expand...

yes - having explored two of the alternatives suggested by Preview planner and finding them geared towards putting frames with hearts and flowers around pics and one of them wanting £10 per month, I'm just going to try your suggestion Nigel.

Of the few people that follow me on Instagram, they do so only because I am posting slightly interesting pictorial stuff so it's annoying when Instagram decides that my pics need improving.

Mike

I cannot find how to enable those options at the bottom right of your screen Nigel that say Graduated Tint.

Mike

mike5100 said:

I cannot find how to enable those options at the bottom right of your screen Nigel that say Graduated Tint.

Click to expand...

It's a local adjustment layer, and it's graduated filter, not a graduated tint. Haven't you used local adjustments yet? If not, you might want to read up on them, or watch some videos. For example: https://www.dxo.com/project/dxo-photolab-using-graduated-filters/

The filter has a dotted and a solid boundary line. It starts to be effective at the dotted edge, and becomes fully effective from the solid edge. If you place the lines very close to each other, the transition is abrupt; if further apart, it's gentle. So you can decide if you want your crop to fade into the black border, as in my second example, or whether to have a sudden transition to black, as in the first.

Thanks Nigel - I did open up local adjustments but couldn't see any sign of Graduated filter. As you say I need to play around with local adjustments - not just for what I want to do at the moment.

In the meantime I found I had Fotor on my Mac and it was a 30 second job to create a background to fill the frame up to 16:9. (and it offered to resize to 1080 wide by default).

Mike




If you don't want borders at left and right you have to set 'background adjust to 0





--
please check out my photos at https://www.flickr.com/gp/186219788@N05/487L56

mike5100 said:

Thanks Nigel - I did open up local adjustments but couldn't see any sign of Graduated filter. As you say I need to play around with local adjustments - not just for what I want to do at the moment.

Click to expand...

You certainly should learn about local adjustments. They can do a lot to improve images. There's plenty of tutorials on how to use them, as they're not a new feature.

mike5100 said:

In the meantime I found I had Fotor on my Mac and it was a 30 second job to create a background to fill the frame up to 16:9. (and it offered to resize to 1080 wide by default).

Mike


If you don't want borders at left and right you have to set 'background adjust to 0

Click to expand...

Here's an example of creating a white graduated border at the top, and black at the bottom:




White border at the top, black at the bottom

If you have FilmPack, then another option is Creative Vignetting:




Creative vignetting (white or black are available)

mike5100 said:

Hah - thought I was going senile - couldn't make this work after realising that you weren't talking about the MAC OS Preview,

Click to expand...

Yes, I did mean the MacOS Preview. Click the markup tool icon:



I'm running Big Sur, and I think this was available in Catalina as well.

--
http://therefractedlight.blogspot.com

Mark Scott Abeln said:

mike5100 said:

Hah - thought I was going senile - couldn't make this work after realising that you weren't talking about the MAC OS Preview,

Click to expand...

Yes, I did mean the MacOS Preview. Click the markup tool icon:



I'm running Big Sur, and I think this was available in Catalina as well.

Click to expand...

Yes I had spotted that but couldn't find any way of making the working space taller than my actual 1080 by 319 image. The only borders I could add seemed to be within that very letterbox size - ie it in effect cropped my image.

Mike



--
please check out my photos at https://www.flickr.com/gp/186219788@N05/487L56