PSC12: Framing Your Pictures

Framing an image can be understood in multiple different ways, it could mean to use framing elements in an image composition, or in this case, it simply means to add a digital frame to your image during post processing.

Why Frame? 

Now the first question obviously is: "Why should I frame my images?" and of course as with so many other things in photography, that's entirely a matter of taste. The three reasons why I usually frame images are these: first, I like to have something about my pictures that ties them together in a way, and I believe a frame works good in this respect. Second, it gives me a convenient location to put my copyright mark and my name under my images without interfering too much with the actual image. And third: I simply like it this way.

Frame What?

I usually only frame images that go online. That's mainly images that are resized to a smaller size for the web. The images I print usually don't get frames, because they might end up in a real frame, and because I haven't found an online printing service yet, that does precise enough cutting of the images to keep my frames fully intact.

The "Chris" Frame

So the frame that I usually do consists of three elements. A white border around the image, a slight inside shadow on the actual image, so that it gets a tad of a 3D look, and my name and copyright mark.

Let's open up an image in Photoshop and try this ourselves.

Step 1: Adding the Frame

Once you opened the image, and did all your resizing, ALT-doubleclick the background layer in order to turn it into a regular layer. Then CTRL/Option click the New Layer icon at the bottom of the layer palette in order to create a new empty layer below the image layer. You should now have an empty layer at the bottom, and your image layer above it.

Adding the frame now is quite simple. Go to Image -> Canvas Size, switch the units in the dialog to pixels, check the box that says Relative, and enter the same value for both, width and height. In case of this image, a value of 25 pixels seems to work quite well. Entering that will extend the canvas by 12.5 pixels on either side. Don't worry about the canvas colour, we'll address that in the next step.

Step 2: Colouring the Canvas

In case of my images, I usually use white as the frame colour. In order to get the frame white, choose the bottom layer in the layer palette, go to Edit -> Fill and select white as the fill colour.

Step 3: Adding 3D

Now in order to give the frame a bit of a 3D-ish look, I usually add a tad of inner shadow to the image, so let's do that now. Click the Add New Layer Style button at the bottom of the layer palette - that's the second icon from the left that depicts the letter f - and choose Inner Shadow. The values that work good for me are an angle of 135°, a distance of 2 pixels, a size of three pixels, and an opacity of around 35%. But again, those values are entirely my personal taste, so what works for you might be completely different.

Step 4: Adding the Copyright

The last step is to add your name and the copyright. Select the topmost layer, click the T icon in the toolbox, choose a font you like, and type away. Don't worry, if it's too big or too small, you can always resize the text later.

In terms of colour I usually choose a light grey for the font in order to not make it too distracting, it's mainly about the image after all.

And if you need to resize the text, select the move tool from the toolbox, hit CTRL (or Option)-T to engage free transform mode, and resize the text by grabbing one of its corners and dragging it to the desired size.

Now simply move the text into place on the border, and you're all set.

And if all that looks like a complicated and time-consuming process to you, take a look back at Photoshop Corner #07 which was about Actions, because a repetitive thing like this framing business is a perfect candidate for automation.