Posted by Koriome on Feb 26, 2025
GIMP is weird software, there's no getting around it. You can do practically anything with it, but the workflow is unsatisfying and weird compared to the ease of Photoshop.
I must emphasize, I am a lazy little shitter. I like to work on one canvas and do everything on that. GIMP feels like it would much prefer me making multiple .xcf files for a project that I'm producing to publish. I'm currently working on producing marketing material for Keweenawesomefest 2025, where having a thin black border around an image on the canvas is part of the brand identity.
From here on out, focus on the image attached to the post itself. GIMP recommends using the Filters > Decor > Add Border method to add a border to your image. This tends to put a border over the entire image that you're editing. I am trying to force GIMP to use a separate paradigm to edit images on a canvas, rather than considering each .xcf file as an independent image. In my case, where I don't wanna spend one million years tweaking settings to get the result I vaguely want, I need something easy and non-destructive to save my sanity. My solution? I like to put the Drop Shadow filter through a little abuse. A lot of effects as of GIMP 3.0 have been made non-destructive, and this is one of them!
Set the Blur Radius to 0, we don't want any blur. Resposition the X and Y offset to 0 so that your shadow is now centered to the image, then use Grow Radius to make it larger until a nice border appears. This part is mainly preference, but I like setting Grow Shape to Square, since I want nice square corners on my border.
ANNNNNND VOILA! border, as it should be. This is still a little more complicated than editing the stroke option in layer settings on photoshop, but it'll do for now. It also won't get the job done if you wanna do something a little more complicated with the border, either. For me, this is quick and dirty as well as freeing enough to become a part of my workflow for this project. I hope this finds you in a spot where you need it, and that you don't hate yourself too much while working with this dogass program. (it's okay, i guess)
have fun!