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 Photo Borders with PhotoshopMy first steps in photography was 8 years ago when I made a trip to Euro Disney. For that purpose I bought a simple point and shoot Minolta film camera. At that time I was happy and content with the pictures. Then, early 2000 a girlfriend got an (one off the first) Olympus point and shoot digicam for her 20th wedding anyversary. I was overwelmed with the quality and possibilities at that time so I went out looking for one, and soon, the Epson Photo PC 800 became my first digicam. At that time I rolled into photography but not the way I am now. I took pictures off parties and gatterings and snapshots that pleased most off my friends and me. Some times the quality wasn't that goot and I wanted to alter clarity, colours and contrast, in my search for some editing programs I discovered Photoshop. I realised that there is much more to that program than simple contrast and level enhancements so I began to teach myself Photoshop and got some amazing results. See below...
As time went by the digital cameras all became better and from that first Epson Photo PC 800, a HP 315, HP 715 and finally the Fuji Finepix S 602 zoom sliped into my hands... :-) With every upgrade to a new camera my photography skills became better. Early 2002 I discovered Photosites where I posted my pictures, but none of those sites gave me the feeling I was participating in photography until someone on ritzcamera told me about WA. I got feedback and did meet some nice people over here. Of course some off the pictures shown here were amazing so I went back to PS and did some experiments on improving the presentation. At that point people began to ask me how I did obtain those result. I tried to explain it in mails. That's the reason why I'm writing this article. It will tell you how to make a framing within a frame and make some drop shadows from the inner picture on the outer picture. Feathering is also handled here. If there is some interest in the article and the topic, furthers topics will be handled in the future. And off course, you all know that when I write an action that can be used in PS I will share it. The following article in the near future will handle that topic.. how to write an action and saving it for future purpose or sharing with friends. So.. here goes on the first topic........ I'll try to explain how it works to add that shadow around the picture dropping on the background picture. It involves some Photo Shop 6.0 or Photo Shop 7.0 editing. Please don't look at eventual spelling mistakes, I'm a dutch guy (Belgium) and English is not my native language. An important note is, work with the original file, not a resized (small) one (the bigger the file, the better the results are) because on the values mentioned below this could give a whole different result, the original file I was working with was approx 2.3 mb. So iff you are using an other file sizes it may be possible to alter some off the values to get the desired result.
To start with, open Adobe Photoshop 6.0 or 7.0 and open a picture.
Go to the top menu bar and click 'Select/all' ... go to the 'Edit/copy' and then 'Edit/paste'.
Now you can delete the background picture. Next step is to create the feathering.
In the toolbox select the rectangular marquee tool
Go to the menu 'Edit/copy' .. next 'Edit/paste' ... a new layer has been created, check your layers box, there should be 2 layers visible. For further editing make the background layer invisible. Next step is to create a new layer we will use for the background colour of the featered image, go to 'Layer/new layer' and confirm. Go to the layer box and drag it to the second place and make it your working layer by just clicking on it, go to 'Edit/fill' and fill it with background colour (in my case that is white). Be sure layer 1 (background) is still invisible and layer 2 and 3 are visible. Click on top on 'Layer/merge visible' and layer 2 and 3 are combined/merged into one new layer 3. Now you can make layer one (background) visible again and make layer 3 (the merged layer) your active one by clicking on it. Next click in the tool box on the move tool
Before making the shadows we will surround the inner picture with a black line... go to 'Edit/stroke) and fill in a desired value, choose outside stroking. And now for the shadow, go to 'Layer/layer style/drop shadow' and a new box will appear where you will fill in some values.
and confirm... the result should be the inner picture dropping a shadow on the background picture. (depending on the size of your image you might have to play around with the settings above to get the right kind of effect. -- ed) From here on, you can let your creativity work for the final presentation of the picture, in my case I inverted the background to negative and changed the clarity, contrast and the colours and for the final touch a line at the edges off the pictur, use 'Edit/stroke' again but chose inside this time. Here are some sample pictures...
I hope this lesson will improve your skills in Photoshop. Yours sincerely..
Patrick hermans About the author:
 © 2002 Patrick Hermans
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and draw a rectangular shape on the picture. Be sure that you entered a value in the top
feathering field before drawing the rectangle.
I used 70 pixels. After that you should have a rectangular with rounded corners.
(little arrow) make sure on top 'show bouncing box' is activated, next click on a corner of
the active picture and some little windows appear on top where you can change values, change
W and H into 85 % and confirm. As a result you will see the merged/featered picture laying on
top off your original background but smaller.
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