You’ve Been Framed! (Photoshop Elements)

Do you have a great photo of someone special that you want to bring into sharp focus—the special person, that is, not the entire photo? A great way to do that is to make a seamless picture within a picture and frame it! We’ll use both the Rounded Rectangle tool and the Rectangle tool to do it. Here’s how:

Step 1: Prepare Your Photo

• Open a photo that would look good with this technique (File > Open).
• Press Ctrl J (Mac: Cmd J) to duplicate the photo layer in the Layers Panel.
• Click on the eye of the new photo layer to hide it temporarily.
• Click on the original layer in the Layers panel to make it the selected layer.

Step 2: Create The Photo Shape

• Click on the Foreground Color Chip. When the Color Picker comes up, choose the color you want for your frame. I clicked on my photo to choose a warm, buttery color. Click OK.
• Get the Rounded Rectangle tool. Notice that it’s just below the Rectangle tool. Keep that in mind, because you’ll need the Rectangle tool for a step later on in this tutorial.

• Click on the Create A New Shape Layer icon. It’s the first in the set of 5 icons to the right of the Radius field. Highlight the Radius in the Options Bar and type 100 px. This is not a hard and fast number. Make the pixel amount larger if you want a rounder corner or smaller if you want less rounding. It also makes a difference what resolution you’re using for your photo. My resolution is 300 ppi. If yours is higher or lower, your rounded corners will appear different than mine, even if you use the same pixel number I used.
• Click and drag an outline around the part of the photo you want to accent. When you let go of the mouse, the outline will fill with the Foreground color, covering up the area of interest.

Step 3: Create The Frame

• Click on the original photo layer (Background layer) in the Layers panel  to make it the active layer.
• Get the Rectangle tool and click and drag an outline that’s slightly larger than the rounded rectangle shape you created earlier. When you let go of the mouse, the shape will fill with the Foreground color. The square shape will appear to cover up the rounded rectangle shape, even though it’s actually on the layer below. That’s because they’re both the same color.

• Click on the top photo layer in the Layers panel to make it active, and click in the box to the left of the thumbnail to make it visible again. This will cover up the frame.
• Press Alt (Mac: Opt) and click between the top photo layer in the Layers panel and the rounded rectangle layer just below it to form a clipping mask. This will group the top photo layer to the rounded rectangle shape. You will now see the “frame.”

Step 4: Make Your Final Adjustments

• Select both shape layers in the Layers panel by clicking on one and Ctrl clicking (Mac: Cmd clicking) on the other one.
• Get the Move tool and check Show Bounding Box in the Options Bar.
• Click on any of the bounding box handles to resize and reposition the frame. You can even move the side handles to make the frame wider or more narrow. It won’t distort the photo because you’re just changing the size of the shapes, not the size of the photo. Click on the rotation handle at the bottom of the outline and drag to the left or right to rotate the frame slightly. When you’re satisfied, click on the green check mark to accept the change.
• Deselect Show Bounding Box in the Options Bar to get rid of the bounding box outline.
• Add a drop shadow to both shape layers (but not to the photo itself).
• Click on the top layer in the Layers panel to select it. Add some kind of fastener, such as a photo prong, button, or hinge to one side of the photo frame.

Step 5: Make The Photo Pop (Optional)

• Click on the original photo (the Background layer) in the Layers panel to select it.
• Choose Enhance > Adjust Color > Adjust Hue/Saturation.
• Move the Saturation slider to the left to remove some of the color. The amount will vary depending on the photo. (I used -40.) This will make the photo inside the frame pop even more. Click OK.

Use the photo on a scrapbook layout, card, or other photo project. Here’s my final photo shown on a card:

Credits:

Card by Linda Sattgast
Card paper, stitching and raffia bow from the Country Cottage kit by Gina Miller (recolored)
Photo prong from the Garden of Memories kit by Veronica Spriggs
Font: 4990810 (downloaded from the internet)

Download a PDF version of this “You’ve Been Framed!” tutorial.

In Windows: Right click on the PDF link above and choose “Save Target As” or a similar command depending on your browser.
On a Mac: Click on the link to download the PDF.

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