Hello everyone, and Happy New Year! Here on my blog today I decided to share with you a really fun Photoshop tip that is easy and fast. See the photo above, and look at the outer edges. It has a neat, torn edged border look. There are many different things you can frame your photos with in Photoshop, and it is really easy to do. Just follow these quick instructions and you will be creating fancy borders around your photos in no time. Why do this? It makes your photos look neat, like for a scrapbook without having to cut them yourself that way, or you can use them on your own home page or blog for an outstanding banner or intro photograph. There are so many uses for doing this to photos, that you will come up with many yourselves after just trying this once! It is so easy! Let's get started:
Open any one of your photographs in Photoshop and resize the original image to something manageable. My rule of thumb is to make my photos 640 pixels by 480, or if I plan to use the photo on my web sites or blogs, I usually size them down to 450 pixels by 338 pixels. These are all at 72 ppi also. If I am not using it for the web, then I might make my photos 200 to 300 ppi in size so they can be printed well. Anyway, enough of this resizing - that's a whole other blog subject!
Okay, get your photo open in Photoshop and immediately move over to the right of your screen with your mouse pointer and locate the "Layers" palette that is docked in your photoshop work space. You will see the little icon that represents your open photo, ususally it is called "background." Put your mouse on that little square representation of your photo and drag it down over the New Layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette (it is the little square next to the trash bin). This will duplicate your background layer and create a new one called "background copy" or whatever. You can rename that if you want, but there is no need, you are nearly finished!
Next, take your mouse pointer down to the New Layer icon again and just click it once this time. It creates a new blank layer. Click on the new blank layer and drag it between the other two background layers. Make sure your default color picker colors are set to black and white (click the letter D to reset your default color scheme in Photoshop). With the new blank layer active or highlighed, click Control+Backspace), this fills that empty new layer with the color white.
Now click on the background copy layer to target that layer. Click the rectangle marquee tool (the tool on your toolbar that is at the very top left of that vertical tool bar) and click and drag a selection area that is just inside the edge of your image, probably around 1/8" in size thereabouts. After you do that, leaving the marquee selected, take your mouse pointer and and click the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette (the icon is a little grey box with a white circle inside it). This adds a layer mask to the background copy, so make sure your background copy layer was active or targeted or it won't be correct. Now you will notice that your photo all of a sudden has a small white border around it. If you don't see a white border, you may have done something incorrect, so go back and follow these steps in this paragraph again.
Now, click the Filter menu at the top of your document work space, then click Brush Strokes from the drop down menu that appears, choose "Spatter" from that menu. The filter gallery will open up and show you a blank photo image with that effect you just chose, applied to it. Just click OK to close the filter gallery, and click "Apply" to get the effect onto your photo. Voila, looks cool doesn't it? Also, while you are being creative, go to the Layer Palette again and click on the effects icon (black circle with a script 'f' in the center of it) and choose "Drop Shadow" just for fun! That's how I did the example photo above.
To finish out, just click the Image menu and choose "Flatten Image" so that you can save your file as a .jpg, and you are ready to go! Easy wasn't it?
Open any one of your photographs in Photoshop and resize the original image to something manageable. My rule of thumb is to make my photos 640 pixels by 480, or if I plan to use the photo on my web sites or blogs, I usually size them down to 450 pixels by 338 pixels. These are all at 72 ppi also. If I am not using it for the web, then I might make my photos 200 to 300 ppi in size so they can be printed well. Anyway, enough of this resizing - that's a whole other blog subject!
Okay, get your photo open in Photoshop and immediately move over to the right of your screen with your mouse pointer and locate the "Layers" palette that is docked in your photoshop work space. You will see the little icon that represents your open photo, ususally it is called "background." Put your mouse on that little square representation of your photo and drag it down over the New Layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette (it is the little square next to the trash bin). This will duplicate your background layer and create a new one called "background copy" or whatever. You can rename that if you want, but there is no need, you are nearly finished!
Next, take your mouse pointer down to the New Layer icon again and just click it once this time. It creates a new blank layer. Click on the new blank layer and drag it between the other two background layers. Make sure your default color picker colors are set to black and white (click the letter D to reset your default color scheme in Photoshop). With the new blank layer active or highlighed, click Control+Backspace), this fills that empty new layer with the color white.
Now click on the background copy layer to target that layer. Click the rectangle marquee tool (the tool on your toolbar that is at the very top left of that vertical tool bar) and click and drag a selection area that is just inside the edge of your image, probably around 1/8" in size thereabouts. After you do that, leaving the marquee selected, take your mouse pointer and and click the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette (the icon is a little grey box with a white circle inside it). This adds a layer mask to the background copy, so make sure your background copy layer was active or targeted or it won't be correct. Now you will notice that your photo all of a sudden has a small white border around it. If you don't see a white border, you may have done something incorrect, so go back and follow these steps in this paragraph again.
Now, click the Filter menu at the top of your document work space, then click Brush Strokes from the drop down menu that appears, choose "Spatter" from that menu. The filter gallery will open up and show you a blank photo image with that effect you just chose, applied to it. Just click OK to close the filter gallery, and click "Apply" to get the effect onto your photo. Voila, looks cool doesn't it? Also, while you are being creative, go to the Layer Palette again and click on the effects icon (black circle with a script 'f' in the center of it) and choose "Drop Shadow" just for fun! That's how I did the example photo above.
To finish out, just click the Image menu and choose "Flatten Image" so that you can save your file as a .jpg, and you are ready to go! Easy wasn't it?
1 comment:
Awesome posting to our rescue..would try to follow & do some magic...
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