a question on the basics...

[back alley]

i have been cropping my images a bit different lately, some of them anyway...in a faux pano format, leaving much of the top and bottom out.
i notice others on flickr do this as well and some include a strip of black on the top/bottom.

how does one get that black strip?

[Lauffray]

In photoshop you mean ?

[maddoc]

Originally Posted by back alley

i have been cropping my images a bit different lately, some of them anyway...in a faux pano format, leaving much of the top and bottom out.
i notice others on flickr do this as well and some include a strip of black on the top/bottom.

how does one get that black strip?

If you use PS or PS elements you might be lucky and somebody already made already a macro (script ?) that does exactly this, adding two black strips at the top/bottom. Otherwise I would create such a layer (two black bars of desired size and position) in PS and then merge it with the photo in question.

[back alley]

i use pse8...

[astro8]

You can crop your photo and then just enlarge the canvas and specify any colour for the 'stripes'....I do this sometimes if I want a white border around the photo. I always keep 2:3 ratio though, just a personal preference.

[kevin_v]

You could also select the portion you want to keep. Invert the selection, then delete and bucket fill the now selected spaces with black. I guess there are a lot of ways to do this.

[Sparrow]

If you crop to the required format, set the dimentions in Image Size (for example 4x8 inches), then go to Canvas Size, and set the Canvas Extension Colour to black and set the New Size height to 5 inch you will get a nice 1/2 inch black line top and bottom ... it's the easiest way I've found so far

[back alley]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

If you crop to the required format, set the dimentions in Image Size (for example 4x8 inches), then go to Canvas Size, and set the Canvas Extension Colour to black and set the New Size height to 5 inch you will get a nice 1/2 inch black line top and bottom ... it's the easiest way I've found so far

brilliant in it's simplicity...

[Contarama]

I like to do this to my photos...I call it letterboxing them...