Photoshop Tutorial: How to Add Two Different Cool Frames to Your Photos

A Fun and Easy Tutorial

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create two different types of frames or borders in Adobe Photoshop. Borders are an easy way to make an image or photo look more professional or creative. In addition, by adding borders, your work will look much better in print or posted online. So let us get started!

To begin with, you obviously need to choose a photo to work with. You can use your own photo or select one to work with from a free stock image site, such as www.sxc.hu. The photo can be of anything: a portrait, a sports scene, a landscape, etc. Most anything will look good with a border added to it. Just use your best judgment.

The Frame Border:

This tutorial will show you how you can add more canvas area easily using the crop tool in Adobe Photoshop.

Step 1.) Open your image in Adobe Photoshop as its own canvas and make sure that the original is saved, zoom out (CRTL+ -), and press F, then set the background color for your canvas area. If you're going for a more professional look, choose black or white. If you want a creative, more modern look, choose a bold color.

Step 2.) Now choose your Crop Tool from your Tool Palette/Menu or by clicking C on your keyboard, then drag out a cropping marquee border on your image. Do not worry about the size, it will not matter.

Step 3.) Then grab the corner point of your marquee (dotted) border and drag outside the image area into the darker gray area. Properly position the border where you wan to add the canvas space.

Step 4.) Press enter, the gray area outside your image is now become black canvas space as the border. From here, you can put a white border using stroke to your image. You can also add text, including your name or copyright to the black canvas area.

The Funky Border:

Step 1.) First, open your image, and duplicate your background layer. Choose your background layer and fill it with whatever color you would like for your border using the scrolling color selector.

Step 2.) Now make a rectangular selection just like when you want to crop the picture. The area outside is where the border effect will be applied to the photo.

Step 3.) Inverse your selection (CRTL+Shift+I) and press Q to apply the quick mask.