The Sprague Lab

Hi there!

Ah, I’m sitting here completing this, and I can hear the sounds of Rowen singing a song she learned on Dragon Tales this morning:  “Buenos Dias, Buenos Dias, Como estas? Como estas?” What a sweet girl. And thus, what took me 3 years of college Spanish to master, she picks up in 30 seconds on a cartoon.

Welcome to another edition of Photoshop Friday! Today’s layout was made with goodies from the AMAZINGLY talented Meredith Fenwick. This technique is a few steps, but it gives quick and stunning results every time. You can complete a sure-fire layout in 15 mins if you want. :)

Here’s the layout:

Creating a Photo Frame using Brushes 

You’ll need a horizontal photo, at least two patterned papers, and some really cool and interesting brushes. I used Grungy Stamp 3 from Meredith’s Techno Grungy Graphic frame set.

Let’s get set up:

1. Create a new blank document. Mine is 12x12, 300 dpi, RGB color, white background.

2. Open and drag your background paper onto the new canvas.

3. Open and drag your photo onto the new canvas.

4. Enlarge your photo (if you are using PSE, click and drag on the corner handles, if you are using PSCS/CS2, type Ctrl-t and click and drag on the corner handles that appear) until its edges touch the sides of your layout. Double-click to commit.

5. I like to crop some off of either the bottom or top of my photo, to put it in proportion with the rest of the page. To do this, select the Rectangular Marquee tool and click and drag to draw a selection of your photo. With the photo layer targeted, hit Delete.

Click for Larger 

6. Our next step is to create the foundation for our photo frame. There are a couple of ways you can do this, but since we have the Rectangular Marquee tool already selected, we’ll use that. Create a new layer (Layer > New > Layer, or click the New Layer button in the Layers palette).

7. Click and drag a selection that goes edge-to-edge on your layout, and peeks up above and below your photo by something like a quarter of an inch.

Click for Larger 

8. Go to Edit > Fill. In the Fill dialog box, choose Foreground color (it doesn’t matter what color this fill is). Click OK. Your rectangle fills with whatever your foreground color is.

9.  Now time for the brushes. Rather than loading the brush set, I just opened Meredith’s Techno Grungy Graphic #3 .png file. Just as easy in this case. Open your stamp file, and drag that onto your layout. Position the stamp so that it peeks out over the top edge of your filled rectangle. The colors don’t matter here.

Click for Larger 

10.  Now make a copy of this same stamp (you can, of course, use a different stamp if you like). Rather than duplicating the layer using the Layers palette (which you can certainly do, by the way), here’s a quick tip for copying: With your stamp layer targeted, if you hover over your stamp and press the Alt key, you can see your cursor change from a single black arrow to a black arrow and a smaller white arrow below it. This is indicating that if you click and drag, you’ll create a copy of this item. Try it! Click and drag on your stamp while holding Alt to make a copy of this item. Position your stamp so that it peeks out of the bottom edge of your filled rectangle.

 
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11. We need to flatten our frame now, so we can cover it with patterned paper. In your Layers palette, shift and click on each stamp layer and your patterned paper layer (ETA: Thanks for pointing this out! Error corrected! :D), to select them all. (If you are using PSE 3, you’ll need to shift-select the items themselves on your canvas). When you have these three layers targeted, right-click on the layers in the Layers palette and choose Merge Layers from the flyout menu. Your 3 layers combine into one.

 
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12. Drag your photo frame layer below your photo in the Layers palette. 

13. Open and drag the patterned paper you’d like to use for your photo frame onto your layout. A solid or semi-solid paper will be best for this one.  Position it in the layer stack just ABOVE your photo frame layer.

 
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13. Clipping mask time! Target your new patterned paper layer, and hit Ctrl-g (Ctrl-Alt-G in PSCS2) to group them together. Boom! A cool photo frame using brushes!

 
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Now you can finish your layout as desired. I included a title using Meredith’s Hand Stamped Antique Alpha stamps, and 3 accent photos, and I also created a text-overlay using our Text Overlay tutorial from a few weeks ago, and a text paper from Meredith’s Secret Garden paper pack.

Here is the layout at full size so you can see the details:

Click for Larger 

 And here are the supplies (all from Meredith Fenwick):

• Papers: Secret Garden (text) and Easy Silence paper packs
• Brush: from Techno Grungy Graphic brush/frame set
• Alpha:  Hand Stamped Antique Alpha
  
•  Other: Fonts: CBX Isabella, Century Gothic

I’d love to see what this looks like with a vertical photo, stretched to the top and bottom of the layout, and the brushes in the frame on either side. I’ve never tried that. Want to give it a shot? :D

That’s it for this week’s edition of Photoshop Friday! Have an awesome Easter weekend, and a happy Good Friday to everyone!

-J 

p.s. Don’t forget last night’s post - blog about your top 10, link me up, and I’ll draw for a couple of RAKs on Monday! :D