Format for White borders, Drop shadows?

[ameerat42]

Hi All,
I looked through the posts that came up with this title and a slight variation to it. This question remains.

Do you yourself change the format of an original photo, say a 6x4, when you add even width borders or drop shadows? Or do you keep the original format and get uneven borders?

For instance, if you want to keep the original 6x4 format and use even borders, say for printing on standard 6x4 paper, then the original image will have to be trimmed "narrower" than 6x4.

If you have a program that can add borders, what does it do? Odds, or evens?
Thanks, Am.

[I @ M]

Wouldn't you be better adding the border at an even width around the original 2:3 aspect ratio image in whichever software you use to get that effect and then resizing the entire image, borders and all?

That way everything would be even and untrimmed, just that the detail in the actual image would be a little less due to being made a little smaller during the resizing.

.

[ameerat42]

Andrew, that's what I have tried: add an even border to a 3:2 pic. Then I had to crop the image plus borders back to 3:2. That made the borders uneven again.
So, I trimmed the orig image a bit, say about 3:1.9 (I think it was) and then added the even borders. The result was exactly 3:2 again. The procedure is necessary because of the sometimes arbitrary crop introduced when you get printing done at dept. stores.
Am.

[I @ M]

Ok, I'm confused ( pretty normal actually ) but I can't see why you can't then just make the borders a tiny bit bigger to allow for the crop. I know for all photo printing that allowance should be made for edge "bleed" but I haven't experienced significant amounts of any picture that we have had printed by a commercial printer suddenly being chopped off when they are in the native ratio.

[ameerat42]

... when they are in the native ratio.

Sorry to have been unclear. (It's OK, I'm getting the hang of it now... and will explain when I've got a working illustration.)

Basically, adding those equal borders to an already "native ratio" image makes it non-native ratio. They then crop that back to native ratio and I lose some borders, generally "thinner" borders along the long edge.
Thanks, Am.