If you have ever ordered prints of scanned images you probably quickly realized the people doing the printing only know how to crop your images to ensure they fill the selected print size completely. Pictures with a portrait orientation must be rotated to a landscape orientation.

Adjusting all your pictures so you get the best print possible can be a real pain in the neck whether you do it before you send your pictures for print or after. It may be that you don't want to part with any of your precious old photos.

That's why I created my Picture Padder program. Picture Padder adds pixels to an image to pad it to the same proportions as the desired print size. Picture Padder orientates your image so it will be as large as possible on the finished print without losing a pixel.

Many digital photos are taken in a 3x4 aspect ratio which equals a print size of 4 x 5.333 inches for a 4 inch tall print. Many photo printing places charge the same price for 4 x 5.333 prints as it does for 4 x 6 prints. Why not make use of that extra 2/3 inch?

Picture Padder can use this added space to print information about the image. You can add the filename of the image or the date the photo was taken if that information is contained in the photo. Picture Padder can also look up the name tags created with Picasa or Windows Photo Gallery. You can print a list of people on the photo instead of writing them by hand.

Screen Shots:

Using Picture Padder

Add images to Picture Padder through the File menu item, the Add Files button or drag and drop files onto the main Picture Padder window. Images can also be added through the Picasa button interface.

Select the finished print size and destination folder.

Use Picture Padder's Settings Dialog to select the image position and details of the area and information added to the image.

Click the Process Files Listed button.

Notes:

Although Picture Padder is designed to save images with a high quality level (90%), there is probably always going to be some loss of quality due to the fact that the images are being reencoded.

Images in the destination directory with identical names as those being exported will be overwritten without warning. If you desire more than one print size, they should be written to separate output folders.

Images are rotated to best fit the chosen finished print size. Output images will always be in landscape orientation.

No metadata is saved to the output image.

Any text added to the image will be added below or to the right side of the image.

Download Picture Padder

If you would like to download my Picture Padder program, it can be found here.

Unzip the file to the folder of your choice. Double click the "Picture Padder.exe" file to run Picture Padder. Picture Padder must be run at least once if files are being added through a Picasa button.

Picture Padder.exe

The Picture Padder.exe program uses the .Net Framework 3.5. It is a basic part of windows but that particular version may not be installed on your computer. Windows 7 and higher have it but it may not be turned on ( Enable the .NET Framework 3.5 in Control Panel).