Photo Frames Never Easier!

I'm going to duplicate the image in a new layer before I begin. Hit Control/Command>A to select the entire image. I'm then going to Select>Modify>Border, and create a border 16 pixels wide. That didn't quite give me as thick an edge as I'd like, so I'll just repeat the process, modifying the border by another 16 pixels.

Now with the selection still active, I'm making a new layer. I can fill this with basically anything I wish... a color, gradient, texture, etc. You know how I love metal effects, so let's get a little crazy and shoot for Solid Gold!

Let's fill the frame with a brown color such as...ok, brown. As the border uses a feathered edge that allows you to see parts of the image under the filled area, I'm going to repeat the fill a couple times. I also want to take away the feather somewhat, and I can do that by adding a bevel to the frame:

... and adjusting the contour:

...for these results:

Not too bad for a couple minutes work. Ok, let's delete all that, and go back to our original image. Make a new layer above the photo, reselect, and fill with a color twice... any will do, as we will be trying out the layer styles for this example. Now open up your Layer Styles Palette and hit a Style. With one click, here is the result using a Layer Style supplied by Adobe:

... and the result of applying one of my own:

Very fast, and very cool!

Applying a text effects action to photo frames works on a premise similar to our approach to paths last week. All we need is a selection for many of the actions I create, as I used the type mask tool almost exclusively. So, if you have an action requiring the type mask tool to be utilized, the process of applying this action to a frame is simple! If the action opens a new image, when you come to the stop asking for the type mask to be entered, close the action generated image and make your frame selection active on your Photo. Press the action's play button again and the effects will be applied to the frame. In this example I'm using an action called Marble Trinket, which I'm sending with this article. Here is the result of the action running on text:

...and the result when applied to my frame:

I hope you have fun with this article, and that soon there will be marbled photos all over the web.