The Borders step decides whether your prints carry a printed white border around the artwork. Borders give you room for framing, signing, and presentation.
Borders are subtractive: they sit inside the final paper size and reduce the printable image area. They are applied per artwork across the whole drop.
Where to find it
Borders runs after the Framing / Product Previews step and before Paper (artwork-details → framing-options → borders → … → paper). It runs once for the whole drop — every artwork gets the same treatment.
Mode
First choose whether you want a border at all:
- None — full-bleed print, image runs to the paper edge.
- Border — a printed border around the artwork. This unlocks the size options below.
Border size
When Border is on, pick a size:
- Small — a slim margin.
- Large — a wider, more gallery-grade margin.
- Custom — set your own minimum (see below).
Small and Large are relative, not fixed centimetre widths. Each variant's border is a fraction of its longest edge — roughly 3–5% for Small and 5–7% for Large, scaled down on larger prints — so the border looks proportionate at every size. To avoid cropping your artwork, the system may grow two of the four sides so the image fits the paper exactly, so the border won't always be identical on all four sides.
Distribution
Small and Large each let you choose how the border is spread:
- Even — equal on all sides.
- Bottom weighted — larger on the bottom. Useful if you sign or edition-number below the image.
Custom
Custom offers three ways to spread the border — Even, Bottom weighted, and Aspect ratio (pad to a target shape) — and a size field. Toggle between Millimeters and Inches; the value is stored in mm either way. The smallest value you can enter is 10 mm (about 0.4"). Whichever option you choose, your artwork is never cropped: the system may increase the white space on two sides to fit your image's shape onto the paper, so the border can be larger on one pair of sides.
Even / Bottom weighted ask for a Targeted border size. This is the border width at a 16 in / 40 cm wide print: smaller prints scale the border down proportionally (keeping the same look), and larger prints never scale it up. So on prints narrower than 40 cm the border will be smaller than the number you typed — that's the intended styling, not an error.
Aspect ratio asks for a Minimum border size and a target shape (2:3, 3:4, 4:5, Square, or A sizes). Print sizes are chosen to match your shape as closely as possible and the border is a true floor — every size gets at least the value you set, with extra padding where the shape requires it. The one exception is very small prints: the border is capped at a quarter of the print's shortest side, so a large minimum may not fully fit there.
How to choose
- Framed editions with a window mount: Small is usually enough.
- Unframed editions a customer might frame themselves: Large for safety.
- Hand-signed or numbered prints: choose Bottom weighted, or a Custom minimum that leaves space below the image.
After saving
Borders are baked into each print file at production — the print is a single asset (image plus border), not a CSS-style margin. You can change borders later by re-opening the drop from the edit hub, but it re-derives the print files, so most artists lock this in early.