Technique 24. Layer Style Border

Technique #24. Layer Style Border

This technique takes advantage of some of the built-in options of layer styles to create a border that will automatically scale with the image, and that can easily be copied to another image (and it only takes two steps to create!).

key concepts:

layer styles

blend modes

Step One.

Since you cannot apply a layer style to the Background layer, you'll have to rename the layer. The simplest way is to press-and-hold the Option key (PC: Alt key) and double-click on the Background layerthis will name the layer "Layer 0." (If you want to name the layer something else, don't hold down the Option key and you'll get a dialog asking you to enter a name for the layer.)

Step Two.

Click on the Add a Layer Style icon at the bottom of the Layers palette, and from the pop-up menu choose Inner Glow. You can experiment with a number of settings here, but the key ones are Blend Mode, Color, Choke, and Size. In this example, I used a golden brown as the color, changed the Blend Mode to Normal, added 14% Noise, set the Choke to 29%, and the Size to 65 pixels. (The blend mode defaults to Screen, which is fine for traditional inner glows, but you'll need to change it to Normal to create a more noticeable border.)

Variations

Try different Contour settings to create multi-line borders. Here I used the contour called Ring and reduced the Noise to 0%.

Variation 1: Ring contour

In this case, the additional contours were loaded from the Contour Picker's flyout menu. I used RingTriple.

Variation 2: RingTriple contour

In this example, after adding the layer style I increased the canvas size and added a white layer below the photo layer. To do this, press Command-Option-C (PC: Control-Alt-C) to bring up the Canvas Size dialog, and add as much canvas as you like. Then, Command-click (PC: Control-click) on the Create a New Layer icon. Press D to set your Foreground and Background colors to their defaults, and press Command-Delete (PC: Control-Backspace) to fill the layer with white.

Variation 3

As mentioned, one of the advantages of using a layer style to create a border is how well it transfers to another image, even when the photo is a different size, resolution, or orientation (as in this example). To transfer it to another image, simply click on the layer style icon (the small f) in the Layers palette and drag it onto your other image (you will have to rename the Background layer in that image or copy the image to a new layer, since you can't add a layer style to the Background layer).