One way to create precise gallery-wraps

[Dieter Mayr]

Recently I had a request from family to print 5 of my images on canvas.
I let them make at a local photographer who has the equipment for canvas printing and mounting.
I wanted my pictures to be print with gallery-wraps because they are tight in composition and have no room to waste some area to wrap around th frame.
For those who don't know, gallery wrap is a small strip added to all sides of the originall image, just the mirrored strip according to that side.
So the image flows seamingless around the corner of the frame.
The images should have a size of rougly 80 by 50 cm, so I decided to make them 30 by 20 inches, which are exactly 762 by 508 mm. close enough at the given aspect ratio of my images at 3:2.
According to my printer the image should have 150 ppi at that size and the wrap should be about 40 mm, 1.5 inches are 38 mm, so, just fine.
First I tried to make a white border and fill in the strips with Composite, but with 4 strips at each of the 5 images positioning the strips pixel-exact is kind of a pain, so I came to the following method:

1. Resizing the image to the desired size and resolution, 30 by 20 inches at 150 ppi give 4500 by 3000 pixel.
2. Making the left and right wrap-strip: Crop/Add Border - Margins Left = 0 and Right = 4500 - 225 = 4275 (225 pixel = 1.5 Inches at 150 ppi) -> Apply
The second strip is just the opposite - Left Margin = 4275, Right Margin = 0 . Now we have 2 strips 225 px wide by 3000 px high.
3. Mirroring the strips at the vertical axis - Mirror/Rotate - The "Mirror" button (with the horizontal arrows).
4. Open Layout - Creating a page with the size 4500 + 225 + 225 = 4950 by 3000 pixels (the image width plus the width of the 2 strips).
The 3000 pixel stay as they are for now, the top and bottom strip will be added later to the now to create image, the corners between the strips would be blank if we would add then now already.
Set the Snap grid in Layout to a useable value, 5 pixel is just fine in my case as al sizes are devideable by 5.
Now create 3 panels, with the following Panel Size and Lower Left Corner:
1st Panel 4500 x 3000 px, LLC 225 x 0 (for the main image),
2nd Panel 225 x 3000 px, LLC 0x0 (the left strip)
3rd Panel 225 x 3000 px, LLC 4725x0 (the right strip)
After all that math now comes the easy part: Just fill the panels with the corresponding images and they are all alligned perfectly pixel precise.
OK in Layout creates a new image 4950 by 3000 pixel.
From this image now we create the top and bottom strip just with the same method described, 4950 px wide, 225 px high , one with Top Margin = 3000 - 225 = 2775, the other with the Bottomn Margin = 2775.
The strips need to be fliped then (mirroring on the horizontal axis) and the Layout is created correspondently with the strip-panels up and down the main panel.

It needs a bit of thinking and calculating in the first steps, but when the layout files are saved they can be used over and over again, just crop and mirror the 2 stris each and put them in the layout, and the galery wrap is done.

Hope it helps the one or the other!

[tomczak]

Dieter,

If I understand the idea correctly, there may be another way of doing it - perhaps a bit easier. This is pretty much the same as your first idea of making a white border around the image, but instead of manually aligning the strips with composite or layout, use Crop/Add Border - using the mirrored strips as borders (border can be an image just click on the border button to choose an open image).

The short recipe:
- resize the image
- make the L,R,T,B strips, then mirror them (just like before)
- Use Crop/Add Border to add strips: choose the needed strip in Border button, type the strip width value (e.g. 225) in the proper border box, and hit Apply. Then you can click on Input Image box to choose the last created image and apply the next Border.

The only issue is the last strip, whose length needs to be extended by it's width value to align properly. So for example I would add R-strip, then Top and Bottom strips as they are, but for the left strip, I need to add 225px border at the strips's bottom before using it as the main image last border.

There is another, kind of perverse, way of doing that, which is even faster (2-steps):

1) Special Effects/Tile the image with:

Horizontal Mirror = Left
Vertical Mirror = Bottom
Horizonal/Vertical Repeats = 2

with initial image of 4500x3000 that will produce a 18000x12000 intermediate image.

2) to get what you need (i.e. 4500x3000 image + 225 pixel mirrored borders on each side), Crop this image with the following margins:

Left = 4500-225 = 4275
Right = 2*4500-225 = 8775
Top = 2*3000-225 = 5775
Bottom = 3000-225 = 2775

Voila!

What's beautiful about the last method (wasting memory for the intermediate large tiled image notwithstanding) is that it can be easily made into a workflow. Or, even better, the first image can be prepared this way, and the rest of them simply dropped from Browse on the result to repeat the procedure.

[Dieter Mayr]

Very nice ways to solve the problem, Maciej, thanks for sharing them!

I didn't come to the idea to use a image for the border, works nicely, I had a thought about using tile, too, but my mind decided to come up with the Layout solution ;)