Attractive Photo framing

By E. Lawrence, Portrait Artist, Painter.

• This will make a frame template for a 4 x 5 inch photo.
• You will use this photo for this project.

1. Settings change: Open Photoshop. Go to Edit=> Preferences=> Transparency => Grid. Make it

• large
• Pink color
• gamut warning opacity 35%

2. Open villa1.jpg It is in 300 dpi

3. Double click on the background layer on the layers panel and set the namee of this layer to layer 0. This is the unlocked layer to make changes to the photo.

4. I choose to add an artistic filter by going to ….Filter=>Artistic=>Dry Brush…here I put all the sliders to the far right giving this a painterly look.

5. Go to Select=> All. (ctrol -a)

6. Go to Image=>Canvas size. Add 1.5 inches to both the height and width so now you have a 5.5 X 6.5 instead of a 4 X 5 so we have room for the frame.
You may need to view at 25% to see the whole image area.

7. Control Click Layer 0 to select the image. Click Select => Inverse.

8. Make a new layer by clicking the icon for new layer on the bottom of the layers panel. This layer should be called layer 1. Layer 1 should be your active layer.

9. Hit your D key to set black as your forground color. Use the Paintbucket on this layer 1 to fill the selection with black. Turn down the opacity of the layer to 50%.

10. Make a new layer by clicking the icon for new layer on the bottom of the layers panel. This layer should be called layer 2. Layer 2 should be your active layer.

11. Click Select => deselect

12. Using the rectangular selection tool select another area outside the black area any size bigger I choose to go 1/4 of the square grid outward of the photo. (if you show rulers, set to inches, Youw ill see about 1/8th inch outside the photo is a good selection.

13. Click Select => Inverse

14. Using the Paintbucket, fill this red(maybe hex 990000) and turn down the opacity of the layer to 50%.

15. Click Select =>deselect

16. Make a new layer by clicking the icon for new layer on the bottom of the layers panel. This layer should be called layer 3. Layer 3 should be your active layer.

17. Using the rectangular selection tool select another area outside the red area any size bigger I choose to go 2 square grid outward

18. Click Select => Inverse

19. Using the Paintbucket, fill this black and turn down the opacity of the layer to 50%

20. Click Select =>deselect

21. Make a new layer by clicking the icon for new layer on the bottom of the layers panel. This layer should be called layer 4. Layer 4 should be your active layer.

22. Using the rectangular selection tool select another area barely inside of the canvas.

23 Click Select => Inverse

24. Paintbucket selection white and rename this layer “pagecolor”.

25. Click Select =>deselect

26. Now go back up and change opacity to 100 % on other layers

27. You should have the picture itself on the background layer and then 3 frame layers
and a pagecolor layer on top The pagecolor layer - you can change that color according to the color of the page you place this on. On each of these layers including the background layer (but don’t mess with the pagecolor layer) double click on the layer to open layer options and play around with this. I always put a thin stroke on the inside of each layer just to outline it and make that at least 2 pixels in width and changing colors here too.

28. Opening the layer options box I will add a gradient to the biggest outside frame layer 2 to add a light source to it angle it opposite to the shadow in the picture of the bench. On the gradient area click once and move the black tab over to the right to make the dark area of the gradient larger the frame itself is concave so the shadow hits opposite of what it does in the photo, linear angle is -150, and change colors to suit you, or just set the gradient to black to white with blending mode of Multiply at 50% opacity and your color choice of frame will show through. .

With this frame having all these layers it can be changed indifinately and the photo can be swapped for another 4 x 5. Might be handy to do this in other sizes too and save this as a pdf file naming it 4X5frame.