An Simple Stroke Frame for Pictures

We are back home at our primary residence after spending a month away mostly at our vacation home.  I took a lot of pictures while away so have been busy getting some of them ready for using on my blogs and digital scrapbooking.  I decided to use a unifying theme for the blog pictures that involved adding a rather simple stroke frame. 

The first thing I did was copy the picture from iPhoto to the desktop so I could open it in Photoshop.  Once opened in photo shop I did whatever editing I wanted on a duplicate layer.  In this case I used the unsharpen mask filter to crisp up the picture a little.  This filter has quickly become one of my favourite Photoshop tool.  From there I was ready to add my frame using the stroke tool but first I had to decide what colour to use for the matte colour.  This is the frame accent colour that picks up a coulour in the photo to draw your attention to that particular colour.  To do this:

• click on the eyedropper tool
• select any colour of interest from the picture usually from the subject of interest; I chose a reddish brown (A3521D) from the duck's chest
• selecting the colour will place that colour into the foreground colour box under the tools

To create the frame:

• working on the duplicate layer with the colour choice set to foreground, click on edit then stroke
• in the pop-up, set the stroke width to 140 px making sure the foreground colour appears in the box (it should automatically), location set to center, blending normal, opacity 100% then click ok - this will apply the stroke in the eyedropper colour (don't worry as it will look a little odd until you do the next step)
• working on the same layer change the foreground colour to black,  click on edit then stroke
• in the pop-up, set the stroke width to 100 px making sure the foreground colour is black, location set to center, blending normal, opacity 100% then click ok
• your frame is now complete with a narrow matte of the highlight colour
• resize your image if desired
• flatten you image and save as or save for web depending on your desired use.

Simple frames like this are not only very easy and quick to do they can be further customized to include bevel and embossing, textures and styles with only a few more steps.  I will go into greater detail with those over the next couple of days.

Garden Gnome
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