Add Borders to Images using Python Pillow

python-pillow-image-add-border.py

from PIL import Image, ImageOps

# open image
img = Image.open("test_image.jpg")

# border color
color = "green"

# top, right, bottom, left
border = (20, 10, 20, 10)

new_img = ImageOps.expand(img, border=border, fill=color)

# save new image
new_img.save("test_image_result.jpg")

# show new bordered image in preview
new_img.show()

Thank you, this was fantastic! I can't believe every modern OS doesn't come with a system utility to do this. I ended up generalizing this slightly, and then making an alias.

Here's the generalized version:

"""Add a border to any image.

One required positional CLI arg, for target file.
Writes a new file, target_file_bordered.png.
"""

from pathlib import Path
import sys

from PIL import Image, ImageOps

border_color = "lightgray"
border = (3, 3, 3, 3)

try:
    path = Path(sys.argv[1])
except IndexError:
    print("You must supply a target image.")
    sys.exit()

img = Image.open(path)

new_img = ImageOps.expand(img, border=border, fill=border_color)

new_filename = path.stem + "_bordered" + path.suffix
new_path_str = str(path).replace(path.name, new_filename)
new_path = Path(new_path_str)
new_img.save(new_path)

That's great, now you can run python3 add_border.py my_fantastic_image.py, and it will save a new version of the image with a border.

However, it's much more useful to make an alias. I'm on macOS, so in .zprofile, I added this line:

alias add_border='python3 /Users/username/projects/border_maker/add_border.py'

Now, from anywhere on my system, I can just use:

$ add_border my_fantastic_image.png

And it will save a file called my_fantastic_image_bordered.png to the same location as my_fantastic_image.png.

I get a int not scriptable error, I think it's coming from the border array. Are you converting that to a string somewhere? Thank you!

@blissdismissed Are you running the original code, or the code I shared recently? Can you share your full traceback?