Wind power

[DavidG]

This photo looks great in the frame. Can I ask a really naive question? How do you get the frame? Is it in photoshop - I've only got 'Elements' and that doesn't seem to have any framing capabilities.
Thanks
David

[j_mcquillen]

I use Photoshop 5 for all my photos. The framing is all done 'manually', so it should be possible in any version, but the menus etc might differ slightly - you should be able to figure it out from this description though...

First I open the picture I want to frame, then go to 'select' and choose 'all' (you can do the same with the rectangular selection tool, just drag it across all of your shot). This should put the black and white 'marching ants' line around all of your photo.

Next, go back to the 'select' menu, and choose 'save selection' - a little options box might pop up here - click ok, and your selection should be saved to a new channel.

Now go back to the 'select' menu and choose 'deselect'.

Go to the 'Image' menu, and select 'canvas size' (not 'image size'). This will bring up a box up that allows you to alter the canvas size of your pic. By increasing the canvas size (you might need to experiment here to get the amount right - depends on the size of your picture) and selecting 'ok' you will see a black frame appear around your picture (assuming black is set as the background colour).

To get the white edge to the picture like in my shots, you now need to load the selection you saved before. Go to the 'select' menu, and choose 'load selection', hit ok and it should load the last selection you saved (the 'marching ants' should now be around your picture, but inside the black frame)

Go to the 'edit' menu, and select 'stroke'. In the box that pops up, select 'outside' as the location and set the width of line you want in pixels (again you might need to experiment to get the width of line how you want it - 2 or 3 pixels should be fine for a trek-earth sized photo). Hit ok, and a white border should appear around your photo, inside the black frame.

Thats it! You may need to delete the selection you saved before you can save the image as a .jpg - you can do this by opening the 'channels' window - the selection should be saved as 'alpha-1' or something like that.

Sounds a bit complicated at first, but is very easy once you know what your doing :)

[dharbott]

I create frames using PSx Elenets (2 & 3) easily using the edit->stroke tool.
Don't ask me why they call it stroke, anyway here's my basic framing technique in Elements:

1. create a layer copy
2. Edit -> stroke (30 px colour black)
3. Edit -> stroke (26 px colour white)
4. Edit -> stroke (20 px colour black)
5. Flatten image and save as
...I'd like to make this into an 'automated task' but can't see how to in Elements - it only takes a few seconds anyway - check out my photos for examples.