Picture Border

[RayPar]

Hi folks,

Does anyone know what would be the best way to apply a border around a series of photos (batch mode)? I think a white border around the photos on a black background looks very cool. Also, any suggestions as to how wide in pixels they should be would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Ray

[DustyDesert]

If you're using Photoshop, then just stroke it. That is, in PS7 make a duplicate layer, choose edit>stroke, choose color, choose your pixel width (try 10 and see how you like it). Flatten and that's it.

[alrobin]

You can easily create a macro in Photoshop to automatically apply a white border of a certain thickness with a single key-stroke for each image open in the program. Not exactly "batch" mode, but the next best to it.

Don't know about other programs, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the software packaged with digital cameras and scanners would also provide this capability.

[Clive Timmons]

Hello Ray

In Photoshop go to select /select all, go to edit /stroke, select pixel witdh and white as your colour ( can be any other colour obviously) and thats it you can also place this stroke line anywhere inside the image using elliptical marquee tool

Regards Clive.

[think(box)]

I haven't put white borders on pic's before - maybe now I will.

Do I have to enlarge the canvas by two times the border width, centered, to keep from losing image content? Thanks!

[alrobin]

Bill,

Yes, this would be a good idea.

By the way, if you simply enlarge the canvas, with a white background, you will have your white border.

However, if you use a dark background for the extra canvas area, and then use the "edit/stroke" method to add the white border, there will be little dark rectangles (like old-fashioned photo-album sticky corner mounts) at each corner, 1/2 the width of the border.

An even more interesting effect can be achieved by enlarging the canvas using a dark background, and then using "select all" and "select / modify border" and then "edit / fill" with white foreground colour to add a border which fades off gradually into the picture area.

(underlined section edited after initial posting).

[RayPar]

Thank you everyone for your helpful suggestions. I don't use Photoshop very much. I usually use Ulead'd Photo Impact an have gotten used to its interface. It looks like now is the time to fire up the PS and go through the learning curve. Does anyone know of any tutorial sites for PS?

Ray

[alrobin]

Ray,

There are many tutorials on the web - go to Google and do a search.

Here are just a few of them:

Al Mackey,

Adobe (with Russell Brown) (you will need Quick Time),

Dolls of Flavour,

Graphic Designer.

Hope this helps.

[RayPar]

Thank you Al. I'll check these site out when I get home this evening.

Ray

[Markoc]

HI Ray,

I just started putting a white border around my images for my slide shows after seeing it in another pte show. Since I do portrait sessions with 50-100 images per session I decided to create an action that takes the original images and rotates the images vertical, resizes them to 1024x685 dpi (perfect for pte shows), and adds a white stroke around the image, then saves it to a folder on the desktop called 'Proofs'. I then take this folder and place it into the client original image folder. After I created this action I created a droplet in photoshop and placed it on the desktop next to the 'Proof' folder. So now to get a set of proofs from the original images, I just drag the original folder over the droplet and let photoshop do the work for me. In about 5 minutes I now have 50-100 images ready to add to pte. I'd be happy to email the action if you like. Its for photoshop 6, which seems to process the actions without stopping, which ps7 seems to do.

Mark O'Connell

[Clive Timmons]

Hi Ray,

Tutorials well a book available by Martin Evening ( which I have loaned to someone and cannot think of the Publishers name )accompanied with a CD has to be well up there , it would help to have some Basic knowledge and PS 6 is the version I bought though I think the differences are little between the two

Best Regards Clive

[pushu]

I think the way Mark is suggesting is the way to do this.

I have created a few actions in photoshop to do the same thing, although all I am doing with the actions is to add the border.

A few tips for creating the action is ... when you select all (ctrl A on a pc) and go to stroke you need to select - stroke inside. if your stroke is outside it won't show up as it is outside of your canvas.

Also you need to tell photoshop what color to make the frame. If when you record your action, you tell it to choose foreground color, then, before you run the action you can decide what color to make the frame and it won't always have to be white (or whatever)

Once the action is created, you run file>automate>batch and the action will be applied to all photos in the folder you choose, while you go and have lunch.

Actions are very easy to create once you have done one or two, and can be as elaborate or simple as you wish. They are a real time saver and can be used for many tasks

[Barry Beckham]

Ray.

I have two Video tutorial CD's that not only cover Photoshop exclusively, but volumes 3 and 4 deals just with the presentation of images.

They cover a simple white or black border to far more creative varieties. Try this link so you can see what they contain.

http://www.barrybeckham.co.uk/tutorials/tu...hotoshop_7.html

Regards

bbdigital

[alrobin]

Ray,

Here is another interesting Photoshop Tutorial site - and it's free!

[RayPar]

Wow....so much to read, so little time. Thanks again everyone for your feedback.

Ray