Spotlight

Frame media

Drop in an image or a video, fit it into the content box, export a still or an MP4. Ken Burns motion for stills, trimming for video, composed natively with AVFoundation.

Get Aspects

One of the tools in Aspects for macOS. $19 once, cloud optional.

Image or video
One artboard handles both: a PNG, JPEG or HEIC, or an MP4 or MOV. An Output picker switches between a still and an MP4 for whichever you dropped in.
Contain or crop
Fit the whole asset inside the content box, or crop it and pan and zoom the crop window from 1× to 3× under the output ratio.
Ken Burns motion
Turn a still into an MP4 that zooms in or zooms out over a duration you set. Leave it on None for a static clip.
Trim, or pick a frame
Set start and end fractions on a source clip. Or scrub to a single frame and export that as a still instead.
Frame and background
Horizontal and vertical margins around the content box, filled with a colour or with a background image or video blurred up to 100 px.
Output size
Thirteen ratio presets from 9:16 to 2.39:1 or a custom W×H, 480 to 2560 px wide, at 1×, 2× or 3× supersampling.

What it is for

Putting an image or a video onto a canvas with room around it. A render on a coloured ground, a screenshot with margin so it does not fight the edge of a post, a set of photographs on one consistent backdrop.

The distinction from Crop is the frame. Frame keeps the whole source visible and gives it space; Crop fills the output edge to edge and lets you choose what falls outside it. Two tools rather than one option, because the decision is made before you start rather than during.

How it works

Drop in a file and set three things: the output ratio, how much margin, and what the ground is. The source sits inside that frame according to a fit mode, and what you see is what exports.

A still can be a still. A still can also be a video: give it a duration and an optional Ken Burns move, and it exports as an MP4 at 30fps. A video source can export either as a trimmed clip composited into the frame, or as a single frame of it, whichever you need.

Sets, not just files

Frame takes a set. Select several files, or drop several at once, and you get a gallery: one crop, one fit, one output size, applied to all of them, exported in one press.

The important detail is what "the same crop" means. It is the same transform, not the same pixel rectangle — each source is fitted from its own native size through the shared scale and offset. A set of differently shaped files comes out consistently framed rather than identically cropped, which is what you actually wanted.

A set has to be all images or all videos. That is not an arbitrary rule: one flag decides the output mode, the trim controls and the exporter, and a mixed set would make all three ambiguous.

What you get

  • PNG or JPEG for a still
  • MP4 for a video, or for a still given a duration
  • Batch export across a whole set, named by your export pattern

One honest limitation

Audio is dropped when a video is composited into a frame. If the sound matters, Cut video is the tool that keeps it.