Creating a 3 D Effect

With Frames
Marty Kesselman
7-29-2010

To place your image into a frame that appears to have the image overlapping the frame
and appearing somewhat 3-D do the following:

1- At top of your layer stack create a new layer (label it frame).

2- Use your guides to establish a reasonable outside border area (perhaps 1 inch all
around)
3- With these guides do the following:
a. Use the rectangular marquee selection tool to create a selection of the
image “inner area”.
i. Save this selection as “inside image area” to allow you to reselect
later if you need to change it or use it.
b. Go to Edit>Stroke to select the stroke parameters you want.
i. Choose a color for the stroke
ii. Choose “outside edge” to get nice sharp corners (center or inner
will round the corners.
iii. Choose something like 10 pixels for the width of the stroke.
iv. Press OK to create a rectangle in the newly created layer
c. Select the newly created rectangular area for the image plus the stroke by:
i. CTL+click the icon of the “frame” layer
d. Invert the selection to select the remaining outside edge of the image by:
i. Under the select menu, select “invert selection”.
ii. This will create a marching ants selection of the outside edge.
iii. Save this selection as “outside edge” for use later if necessary.
e. Fill this selection with 20% white to create a transparent fog like
appearance, or try some other color choices to suit your image. Do this
by:
i. Shift+F5 or go to edit>fill
1. choose white and set opacity to 20.
f. You now have created most of the affect. The inside border, however cuts
through your subject. To fix this a number of approaches are useful:
i. Simply erase the stroked boarder carefully to reveal the image
beneath.
ii. Or; select your subject from the layers below your frame and put it
on top of the frame layer to make it completely visible
1. make a selection of your subject from a composite layer
that contains all enhancements of the subject.
2. press ctrl+J to put this selection on it’s own layer.
3. move the layer above the “frame layer
 g. You have placed your subject so that it extends over the frame edge. To
add additional 3-D look allow part of the inside “stroked” boarder to cover
your subject.
h. Make a selection of your “frame” layer that suits the 3-D concept
i. Use the rectangular marquee tool to select a portion of the frame
that will be placed over the subject layer and cover some of the
subject.
ii. Press ctrl+J to create a new layer with this part of the frame.
iii. Move this piece of the frame layer above the subject layer
i. Now to eliminate the 20% white that sits on top of your image from the
piece of “frame” layer reselect your saved selection of the edge
i. Go to select>load selection>choose “outside edge”
ii. Cut this selected area from the piece of “frame” layer by pressing
ctrl+X.
4- Your image is done.
5- If you want to dim out the edges of your subject beyond the inside “stroked”
boarder, you can do this by obtaining an “intersected” selection of the “subject”
and the “outside edge” selections and filling it with 20% white. Do this by:
a. Reload the “outside edge” selection
b. Change to the “channels” pallet
c. Ctrl+alt+shift+click on the icon of the “subject” mask.
d. This will intersect the two selections, providing marching ants to indicate
the selection of only that part of the subject that is in the outside frame.
i. Go to edit>fill or shift+F5 to fill with 20% white as before.
6- Finally you are done.