Fun with Photoshop – Borders and Signatures by Tommy Gui Wanted to post your photos for critiques, but was worried that your presentation appears to be too plain? How about adding a border and your own signature to it? To get you started, this tutorial has been prepared as a guide. Note that this is not the only way to do it, however, 1 of the simpler flow. Hope it helps. Getting the Border 1. Launch Photoshop. 2. Open the image which you want to create a border. 3. For a white border, click on Set Background Colour tool from the Tools panel, choose white as the background colour. 4. Press Ctrl-A to select the whole image, follow by Ctrl-C (This will copy the whole layer). 5. From the Image menu, select Canvas size. 6. Add on your desired border size to the current image size. For eg, if your original image is 600 x 398, and you want a border of 30 pixels. Fill in 630 x 428 into the dialog box. 7. Click on OK to close the Canvas Size dialog box. You should see a white border around your image. 8. Press Ctrl-V to paste the layer you have copied earlier on. You should see 2 layers now, with the new layer selected. (Note that if you have not adjusted the image postion, your pasting will be right on top of your original image.) 9. To add a black line around your inner image, select Stroke from the Edit menu. Fill in a value for the width. For this case, I will use 1 px. (The Stroke command allows you to paint a border around a selected area of the image. You can also give an opacity value to a stroke as well as determine its position relative to the selection border.) Creating a shadow 10. From the Layer menu, select Layer Style, click on Blending Options. 11. From the pop up Layer Style dialog box, try out the various styles to get your preferred effect. For this case, I selected Drop Shadow. 12. Click on the OK button to close the dialog box. You should be able to see your style in the Layer panel. How about your signature? 13. From the Tools panel, click on the Type tool. 14. From the Windows menu, select Character to open the Character panel. 15. Select your font, colour, size etc. 16. Click on the image to type in your text. (Note that the text will be created in a new layer) 17. Repeat Step 10-11 to create a shadow for the text. 18. Select Flatten Image from the Layer menu to flatten all your layers. 19. From the File menu, select Save For Web to publish your picture. A dialog box will pop up. 20. From the pop up Save For Web dialog box, click on the 4-up menu tab. 21. Select your desired settings and click Save. 22. Post! Final