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How to Make a Frame with Photoshop

Easy Steps to Framing a Picture with Photoshop
© John Corney 2007

I like to frame my photos with Photoshop before I post them to my website – it provides some mat-like white space around the photo just like when you get the real photo framed, and this helps to bring focus to the photo itself.

A friend asked me the other day how much it was costing me to get the photos on my website framed thinking that they were photos of framed photos! So I fooled at least one person. Anyhow, I thought it might be nice to share how to make a frame around a picture with Photoshop, so here’s how to do it. It’s actually pretty easy.

Obviously you start out with your photo just like this:
Photo from framing with Photoshop
Next we will extend the canvas outside of the image with white. Navigate to Image > Canvas Size just like this:

Next, specify how many pixels you want to exntend the canvas by as illustrated below. This will actually depend on the size of your photo. The one I'm using was optimized for the web so it is just 72dpi, so "less is more" in this case. If you have a high resolution image, then you will probably want to extend by more; just play around with it. Make sure the "Relative" box is checked and the anchor is set to the center. That's the default, so you shouldn't need to change anything here.


Your image should be looking something like this now. (Note, the gray border is not part of the image - it's the background of my workspace in Photoshop - to the edge of the white is the image.


This post is getting long with a lot of images, so let's move to another post so that the page won't take too long to load.

How to create a picture frame in Photoshop page 2.

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