Borders

Posted by CallyAnn Hamilton on Feb 27, 2013 in Blog, Photography |

I learned this neat border trick from Caryn Esplin’s book, Custom Images. To get this effect, I set a black mask over the image and a white layer behind, then I used white on an assortment of thick, heavy brushes to “paint” the image back in, leaving the white background layer to show through as a border.  I really like the effect that the lowered opacity on the brushes gave me.  I’ll definitely be using this again.

This is the original image:

 

 

This is another neat border technique, and a relatively simple one at that.  I just duplicated the layer, set it to multiply, and then used the rectangular marquee tool to delete the center, leaving behind the darkened edge.  I then applied a 10px stroke in a light lavender color and duplicated the multiply layer to darken the border even more.  It ended up being too much so I scaled down the opacity on the second multiply layer.  And, voila!  This isn’t one of my favorite images, but I think the border helped salvage it, along with several other edits made in camera raw.  The original is below:

 

 

 

This border effect was more complicated than the others, only because I’ve never used the rectangle tool.  I started by cropping it and then adding to the canvas to get the white border.  Then I added a white rectangle using the rectangle tool, and masked out part of it using a black rectangle tool.  I applied a motion blur to the inner border and lowered the opacity of the layer to soften the border.

The original:

 

 

This is a really elegant framing technique Caryn Esplin learned from Scott Kelby and shared with the class.  I created the template by using the rectangle tool to create black “windows,” and then I posted the photo over the template and converted it into a clipping mask.  I finished it off by adding my logo on the bottom.

The image is a variation of the light painting I posted before: