Photoshop Tutorial
Summary:
The framing style of a photograph, picture, or image can greatly enhance its appearance. In this tutorial, we will take a look at creating a dry brush style picture frame to add originality and style to your graphic design projects.
Step-By-Step Instructions:
1. Open your image and press to duplicate the Background layer:
2. From the Image menu, choose Canvas Size (or press Control+Alt+C). In the Canvas Size dialog, make sure the Relative checkbox is turned on and enter 1 inch in both the Width and Height fields.
3. Press-and-hold the Ctrl key and click on the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to create a layer below the current layer. Press D to set your Foreground and Background to the default colors. Then press Ctrl+Backspace to fill the new layer with white:
4. Press-and-hold the Ctrl key and click on the top layer’s thumbnail (the copied Background layer) to load it as a selection. From the Select menu, choose Modify>Contract, enter 12 pixels as the Contract By amount, and click OK (for higher resolution images try 510 pixels):
5. Make sure that the top layer is active and click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to create a layer mask from your selection:
6. From the Toolbox, choose the Brush tool (B), and then in the Options Bar, click on the Brush thumbnail. In the resulting Brush Picker, click on the right-facing triangle and choose Dry Media Brushes from the drop-down menu. Go ahead and click OK in the resulting dialog and replace your current brushes (you can always choose Reset Brushes from the same drop down menu to get back to the default set). Choose one of the Dry Media brushes. I chose Pastel Medium Tip for this example.
7. Make sure the layer mask is still active and click once on the top-right corner of the photo. Press-and-hold the Shift key, move to the top left corner of the photo, and click again. The Brush tool will paint a straight line between your two clicks.
8. Repeat this operation for all four sides of the photo, and don’t worry about trying to stay perfectly horizontal or vertical. In fact, you can add to the randomness of the effect by deliberately painting slightly askew. Here’s the result, along with a view of the layer mask.
Of course, each brush will have a different effect and you shouldn’t restrict yourself to just the Dry Media brushes. You can try any of the built-in brushes or, as we’ll see in the next technique, make your own.
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