Make a Frame Around Your Photo From Your Photo!

Here's a fun little tip I borrowed from a book about Adobe Photoshop CS2, "Top 100 Simplified Tips & Tricks. I have modified the steps somewhat, and I really like this. There are so many ways to make frames for your photos in Photoshop, this is just one of the many I will cover on my blog here. This one is extremely easy to learn and do, so I thought I'd post it and have you try it out. Have fun!

Open a nice photo like the one I opened on the left (it can be any subject, but I chose a flower since I have tons of flower photos!). Resize it to something 'manageable' - I like 640 x 480 for small uses, and 1024 x 768 for larger prints, etc. All of my posted photos on this blog, incidentally are 450 x 338, except for this one, which is slightly larger to accommodate two photos together.

OK, once your photo is open and is resized to what you would like, click on the Rectangular Marquee tool (the top left tool in the vertical toolbar). Click and drag inside the photo where you'd like the frame to end (make it any thickness you like). This is how you delineate the actual frame on your photo. Then click Select>Inverse. Once you do this, and you see the 'crawling ants' of the selection area, click Control (CTRL)+J to jump this selection to its own layer. While the new frame layer you've just created is still active in the layers palette, click the tiny arrow in a circle that is at the extreme top/right of the layers palette. A menu will fly out, and pick "Blending Options" and click on that. When the fly out menu pops up, click on the drop down menu in the upper center of that screen and choose the mode of "Screen." You'll see the area around your photo that you chose with the Marquee tool go lighter. This is the beginning stage of your frame, looks cool huh?

Next, from the bottom of your layers palette choose the Add Layer Style button, which is a black circle with a script "f" inside it. From this palette, click on "Stroke." You will see a border around the inside of your new frame that comes up whatever the default color is. You can click that color thumbnail and change it to white or whatever you think looks nice with your photo. You can also change the thickness of that border line around your photo using the slider. I like to keep it thin like in my example, that border is size "2." Click the "Drop Shadow" from that same menu to give the frame a bit of depth. You can change the orientation of the drop shadow using the little radius circle (just move it whichever way looks best for your photo/frame).

You are almost done, just click Layer>Flatten Image from the top menu in Photoshop, and 'voila' you are finished. (Don't forget to "Save As") Nice effect isn't it? And talk about easy...