How to place a photo on a grey background?

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1980-f

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Name
Simeon
Edit My Images
Yes
A novice, I want to place scanned bitmapped old photos of varying dimensions on 8"x6" grey backgrounds to be sent to an online photo printer. I have MS Paint and GIMP 2 under Windows 7 and I'm struggling to do this.

What is a straightforward method? I would like to make a grey rectangle, place the image on top then save as a bitmap or jpeg. This seems so easy, yet so difficult for me.
 
I don't use Paint and although I have Gimp on one computer it's about 20 years old and for some reason my system won't allow me to download it now. I think my AV thinks it's a bit dodgy for some reason. However...........I guess what you have doesn't allow you to add a border to an image as that's one way to do it. Alternatively, can you create a new image with your chosen background colour, sized appropriately, copy and paste your scanned image onto it as a layer then flatten layers? If what you have really won't allow you to do it, you could buy PaintShop Pro, currently on offer for £45 and compatable with W7. It will definitely do what you want to do, is a standalone so unlike Adobe there's no subscription, and is also a pretty powerful photo editing software package. (Or download the free trial, do your stuff and don't buy it - depends how many images you have and how long it'll take you.)
 
If I was in Gimp, I'd say background colour to grey and then increase canvas size to something that was an 8:6 ratio bigger than the original picture, select center image when you do it.
 
I've installed PhotoFiltre which is free and exactly at my level, and I've done just what J Veitch has suggested. Thanks for your ideas.
 
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