I have gotten a lot of requests on how I do picture frames with Paint Shop Pro, so here is the method I use. This is my method and I don't suggest it is the only method. The image I used and the wood texture can be downloaded here. You will need to know how to use layers, flood fill tool and selection tools to do this tutorial. The finished product is shown below.

Framed Picture

Preparing your Picture to Frame: Open the image you want to frame and do Selections | Select All then Selections | Save Selection to Alpha Channel and name it picture ( this will be used later for the detail steps ).

Adding a matte to your picture: If you want to have a matte between your frame and picture you will want to add that area now. To do so set the background color to one that can be easily selected with the Magic Wand ( any color not along the edges of the picture will do). Now add a border with Image | Add Borders with Symmetric checked. and enter the width of the matte area you would like ( I used 25 for this tutorial ).

Select this area with the magic wand and save the selection to an alpha channel named matte. You can now Flood Fill it with a solid color, pattern or air brush using a paper texture. In this case I flood filled with white then set my foreground color to a very light gray. I now used the air brush set to tip = round, size, opacity, density, hardness all set to about 50 and step to 1. Now I just sprayed the pattern with your matte selection turned on. At this point you should have what I have in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

Adding shadow for realism: We need to do a little detail work at this point so add a new layer and go to Selections | Load From Alpha Channel and choose the selection called picture. Now go to Image | Effects | Cutout and set it to Fill Interior With Color unchecked, Shadow Color = Black, Opacity = 100, Blur = 20, Horizontal/Vertical Offsets = 5. Once this is done I set the opacity of this layer down to about 50. I then add another layer and repeat the Cutout again with Shadow Color changed to White, Horizontal/Vertical Offsets set to -5. After I set the opacity on this layer down to about 50 I go to Layers | Merge | Merge All (Flatten). You should now have something similar to Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

Adding the Top Frame section: At this point we are ready to start our frame and I assume you are wanting a frame that has grain such as wood. I first set the background color to black and add a border of 1. Now lets save this so do Selections | Select All, Selections | Save to Alpha Channel and name this Picture with matte. We now change our background color to one that will be easy to select and add another border set to 20. With the Magic Wand, select this new border area and then Selections Promote to Layer. Now this is important so with the magnifying glass increase the area on the top left corner of your image for easier viewing. Select the Free Hand Selection Tool and set it to Point to Point. Now hold down the Control Key and start at the upper left corner (0,0) and bring the point down to intersect the edge of the frame area and then an area. Fig. 3 the area of the selection you want to exclude.

Fig. 3

You now want to repeat this at the top upper right side on your image. Now once this is done choose the Selection tool set to Rectangle, Now select the balance of the area below the top frame area while holding down the Control Key. This will de-select the rest of the area we don't want to fill with wood. Open your wood swatch in PSP and with the Flood Fill Tool set to Pattern and under Options select your wood swatch, fill the selected area at the top of your image. You should now have the top portion of your frame made, it should look like Fig. 4 below.

Fig. 4

Adding Depth to the frame: We need to add some depth effects to the frame top at this time by adding a layer. Make your background color black, foreground color white. Now flood fill the top frame selection with the flood fill settings set to Linear Gradient and options set to 180 degrees. Set the layers properties to Overlay and the opacity to about 60. Now select the bottom layer and promote it to a layer ( if it isn't one as of yet ) and turn off the visibility. Select the top layer and do Layers | Merge | Merge Visible. This completes the top part of the frame. We now will build our frame out of this one section.

Adding The Bottom Frame: Select the layer with the frame top and duplicate it by right clicking on the Layer Control Panel Layer Bar and selecting Duplicate. We will use this for the bottom frame piece so you need to go to Image > Flip and you will have a matching bottom frame piece.

Adding the Left/Right sides: Duplicate either the top or bottom frame layer at this time and do Image | Rotate 90 degree left. This gives you the left or right side depending on which you choose to start with. Use the Mover tool to line the side frame edge up with the top and bottom part of the frame. Now we need to line up our frame layers so that the top and bottom frame layers are to the top. Once you have the top/bottom frame section in position you will see a nice mitered edge on the side you have just done at both the top and bottom. Now make sure you have the side frame layer chosen and duplicate it for the other side. At this point just do Image > Mirror and it should be lined up for you on the other side. You should now have your frame pieces in place so turn of the visibility of all layers except the 4 frame layers and make sure you have one frame layer chosen. Now Layers | Merge | Merge Visible to put the frame on one layer. You should have something like in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5

Highlighting the Miter: We are ready for the final details on our frame. We start by selecting the layer with the frame and with the wand select the transparent area in the center of the frame. Save this to an alpha channel as frame center. Now add an new layer and Set the foreground color to black. Choose the Line Tool and set it to Line Type = Normal, Width = 1 and Anti Alias checked. Start in the upper left corner at (0,0) and with the shift key depressed draw a line at a 45 degree angle as show in Fig. 6. Repeat this step for the rest of the corners. Once this is done Load from Alpha Channel the frame center selection and do Edit | Clear. Now turn the opacity for this layer down to 30 and merge this layer and the frame into one layer.

Fig. 6

Adding Frame Shadows: To finish up we need to add a new layer and Selections | Load from Alpha Channel the 'picture and matte' selections we saved earlier. Do Image | Effects Cutout set to Shadow Color = Black, Opacity = 100, Blur = 10 and Horizontal/Vertical Offset set to 3. Now add another layer and repeat the Cutout but change the Shadow Color to White and the Horizontal/Vertical Offset to -3. Now merge these two layers together and turn the opacity down to about 50.

Putting it all together: Turn on the visibility of all your layers then do Layer | Merge | All Layer (Flatten) and set the background color to black. Now the final step is to do Image | Add Borders set to Symmetric checked and 1.

This is the way I do my frames when I want to use a frame that has grain like wood. If you have any questions or comments feel free to email me.

This page was last updated on March 20, 2002 by Joe Cilinceon