I have an image that is A3 size. Whenever I scale down the image, so I can reveal a white border, I notice they are not equal on all sides (as in the longest and shortest sides are not the same width) What am I doing wrong?

Forum|Forum|8 days ago
April 20, 2026
4 replies
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I have an image that is A3 size. Whenever I scale down the image, so I can reveal a white border, I notice they are not equal on all sides (as in the longest and shortest sides are not the same width).

Wether I do this by transforming holding ALT, or alone and centring after, I never have an equal border on all sides.

If I change the canvas size (with relative ticked) this makes the entire image larger than A3, which I do not want.

How can I scale down my image and add a border, so that the total image size is A3 and the border is an equal width on all sides?

Thanks - N4A

N4AAuthor

Participant

Thank you all for your responses. I have tried the suggestions and in one way or another they change the size of the canvas. @ExUSA your answer makes sense and let’s me know I’m not crazy!

I’ll have to crop the image in some way. Thanks again all 🙏

Claire H.

Community Manager

Hi @N4A, Glad to hear you found your answer! Can you let the community know what you ended up doing to solve your question? Thanks! ^CH

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

Borders on images without rescaling.

Open Layer Styles with double-click on Layer.

Set Stroke to desired size and color. See screenshot.

Go to Image => Canvas Size

Add Stroke Width Value (13 pixels) to Canvas width & height.

Equal Borders on all sides.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

E

ExUSA

Legend

This will no longer be A3 size or aspect ratio, I think that’s the problem.

War Unicorn

Community Expert

You could try creating a new layer, fill it with something like white, then add a stroke layer style (set as inner) with the color white. Then set that layer’s blend mode to Multiply, which will knock out the white. See screenshot.

I think there’s more than one way of doing this, like using the Rectangle Tool with an inside stroke and no fill (via the Properties panel), but that’s the beauty of Photoshop. :)

E

ExUSA

Legend

You can’t without cropping. Math explains why.

A3 paper has an aspect ratio of 1:1.414 which means if for every cm of the shorter dimension, you get 1.414 cm of the longer. So let’s say you add 1 cm all around to a 10cm x 14.14 cm image, you’d have 11 cm x 15.14 cm which is 1:1.376.