Photo Borders and Stylization

I got this off a Photoshop TV episode. What I want to do is add a loose border to this wildflower image, and stylize the background.













1. First, you need to have your picture open. Go to Edit-Canvas Size and increase the size by at least 20% (toggle between inches and percent in the little dropdown menu).













2. Here's a cool tip--when you want to select the contents of a layer without dragging a marquee, just hit the Control key, then click on the layer. (If you have CS2, you have to click the layer's thumbnail.)

3. Make sure your image is selected, create a new layer, and with that layer active, go to Edit-Stroke and pick an appropriate width. I used 10 px. Make sure you select the Center option in the dialogue box, then click ok. Your image should now have a border filled with your foreground color around it.

4. Using the Cntrl-click method, select the contents of your Stroke layer, and going to the Tool menu select Quick Mask mode (the little dark gray square with the circle inside, under the color picker). Everything but the selected area will turn red.

5. Go to the Filter menu, and choose something like Brush Strokes-Spatter, or Angled Strokes. Not all filters will work, so you may need to experiment. Click ok, and you'll notice that it changed the shape of the stroke selection.

6. Return to normal select mode by clicking the button to the left of Quick Mask, and then drag the Stroke layer into the trash. Under Edit-Fill, choose whatever options you want and click ok. Your weirdo selection is now filled. Deselect.

7. At this point you should have two layers--one for your image, and one for the background. With your image layer active, select a layer style from the popup menu at the bottom of the palette, such as drop shadow, adjust the settings to your satisfaction, and whallah!

8. A final step if you want to dress up your background a bit. Select that layer, and choose a texture filter. I used Texturizer-Canvas. Since it looked too white, I created a new layer just above it, filled it with an orange from the flower and dropped the Opacity to about 25%.













9. Finally, you can flatten your image (through the layers dropdown menu) and save it. There's a lot of leeway here--I'm sure there are cooler effects than this, but my goal is just to introduce the method. Another time, I'll post a method of creating a matte and framing effect for your photos.

One more thing--I thought this was really cool. Here's a quick tip on how to make your signature into a brush to be used on your photos or artwork. If you have a graphics tablet, you can just scrawl your John Hancock right into Photoshop, but everyone else will have to scan or photograph it. Once that's done and you've cleaned up the image, just go to Edit-Define Brush Preset, give it a name and you've got a nice resizable signature brush. To make sure you don't lose it, go to Edit-Preset Manager, locate your new brush or brushes, select it and click Save Set. This method can be used on any image you want. That's all I've got time for right now. I hope someone out there might find a use for all this. :)