Saturday January 28 2012
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Fancy Frame Effect Using Blurs
FancyFrameEffectUsingBlurs.jpg

You can buy add-ins for Photoshop to add fancy frame effects to your images. A previous tip demonstrates how to add an emulsion edge effect to your photos.

Here's another frame edge you can quickly apply to your images.

To get started, you should flatten the image and convert it to 8-bits. That means, you should be finished with all of your adjustments. Framing and edge effects should come at the end of your workflow.

You need to select the Rectangular Marquee tool and make a selection inside your image to where you want the frame edge to extend.

The next step is to invert the selection. Until you invert it, any changes would have an effect the center of the image. You want to change the edge. You can use the menu item Select | Invert or use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Ctrl+i (Shift+Cmd+i on the Mac). This will leave you with a double set of marching ants.

This next step will only work if the image is in 8-bit mode. It can also take a minute or two to run. You want to use the Radial Blur filter to add colored striations where there is currently detail in the frame area.

Details at the cardinal points (North, South, East, West) will typically remained unblurred. A quick round of Gaussian Blur will help smooth out the frame edge, making it less obvious that a radial blur was used to generate the frame.

One last touch remains. To add a stroke of color around the inside of the edge. White is ideal in this case.

And, there you have it! A snazzy, multicolored frame effect generated from the outer edge of the image itself.

Enjoy!

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Author Bio: 

Glenn Mitchell is an avid digital photographer, technical writer, and university administrator. He is an author with a long list of publications in trade magazines, peer-reviewed academic journals, and co-authored books. He is creative force behind The Light's Right. His photography can be seen at his gallery site: www.thelightsrightstudio.com.

Author: 
Glenn E. Mitchell II, Ph.D.
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