Wood Effect Frame

Click to enlarge

Adding a frame to your image could really help to finish it off. This particular image was taken using a Nikon Coolpix 950.

With your chosen image open in Photoshop we first need to increase the canvas size. Choose Image > Canvas size and from the drop down menu find the percent setting and increase both the width and height by approximately 5%. Make sure that the center of the box is clicked as this will increase the frame around your image evenly. You may need to experiment with size until you have a frame that suits your image.

Using the Magic Wand tool we click on to the border.

This will put the marching ants around the frame in two rows. Calling up the layer palette (short cut F7) we Create a New Layer by clicking on the icon in the Layers Pallet and the marching ants also appear on our new empty layer.

Working on our new layer we choose a colour for our frame by double clicking on the foreground colour on our tool palette. Select the colour that you wish to use for your frame from the Colour Picker . Call up the Fill tool or Bucket from the tool palette (short cut K on the keyboard) and fill the area between the marching ants on our new layer. We can now deselect this area using Select > Deselect or hit Ctrl D on our keyboard.

To achieve a wood grain effect we first add Noise found under the Filter >Noise > Add Noise. Try a value of around 20 and click the Gaussian box.

To make our frame look realistic we need to add joints to the corners. From our tool palette select the Polygon Lasso

and draw it around the top of our frame, and diagonally over the corners.

We repeat this to the bottom of the frame holding down the Shift key which will allow us to add to this selection. A 'plus sign' will appear alongside the cross of the lasso . Once we have done this we add 'Motion blur' Filter > Blur > Motion Blur - we set the angle to 0 and distance to around 15 this will now give you a wood grain effect. We repeat the selection to both sides of our frame but when we add the Motion Blur we select an angle of -90 .

Under the Layers tab select Layer > Effect > Bevel and Emboss and from the drop down menu under 'style' select Inner Bevel. Set the depth to approximately 20. This will now give a 'frame' effect around our image.

Click to enlarge

All that's left to do now is to flatten and save and your frame is complete!. Try experimenting with different colours and settings under the bevel and emboss menu. A wide variety of frames can be made this way.