Help with a photo and a frame software

[beaudodson]

I noticed on Mikes page that he has a frame around his photos. I have tried to figure out how to do that. This is an example - below.

I know how to expand the canvas to make the white...but how do I get the grad and darker area around the white. This makes it look a lot nicer.

Any thoughts on this? I have Adobe Software.

Thanks

 

[John Diel]

Beau,

Which Adobe software do you have? All of this is done with layers. I think you're talking about the shadow effect that borders the small white border over the main canvas.

There are various effect actions that will do this (and so much more) for you. Most are freely available and a few at small cost. Do a Google search for "Photoshop actions" and see what comes up. I use several types to get different effects.

The easiest way that I can explan this is to have your base canvas sized and colored (white in this case). Make a New File and size it smaller that the main canvas (say 1/2 inch all the way around). Copy this and paste it on your main canvas. This will create a new layer automatically and can be viewed on the pallets menu. Right click in the pallets menu on this new layer and select blending options. Then click the shadow button and you have a simple shadow.

Now I'm trying to do this from memory, so the steps may not be exact. However, it's pretty close for Photoshop. However, from here you would open up your photo and crop it to a size that fits within layer 2, then copy/paste the cropped photo on top of the layer and move it as needed.

Actions will do this nicely as well as other effects that will blow you away!

 

[Mike Umscheid]

Steps for Paint Shop Pro... but this technique can be applied to Photoshop, it's really not that much different.

1. increase canvas size 10-20 pixels on each side
2. select all
3. another canvas size increase 10-20 pixels
4. duplicate layer
5. 3-d effects, drop shadow
5a. set offset to vertical=4, horiz=4
5b. set blur and opacity to your liking
6. merge layers
7. repeat steps 4 thru 6, 3 different times for offsets of (-4,-4), (-4, 4), and (4, -4)... basically applying the effect for each corner such that the whole border around the image looks uniform.

of course, you can set your offset values to something other than 4... but for this example, that's what I used. THis is my typical methodology for making interesting looking borders/frames... and I usually am recording these actions while I do it and save it as a script (Paint Shop Pro X). I'm sure PHotoshop is very similar... Photoshop calls them "actions".

Other 3-D effects would include chisel, cutout, and inner/outer bevel... other than drop shadow.

 

[Jim Hunt]

If you are not as particular, you can use Photocleaner. It does a nice job and can batch process, do captions and frames. All for $25. I use it all the time for sports photos I process for the web.

 

[Evan Bookbinder]

Mike, thanks for the quick tutorial!

As for that photo above Jim, is the guy mad because some other dude is touching his ball?

Evan

 

[beaudodson]

Thanks. Adobe CS2 is what I am using. That worked. Thanks for the help.