How to Make Easy Decorative Frames Using Photoshop

Above is the result of this tutorial.

Here I have an image of a young girl enjoying a snow day. I’d like to put a decorative frame around it to make it more interesting. Maybe make a holiday card out of the photograph.

The first thing I’ll do is use the crop tool:

I’ll select the whole image with the crop tool:

Then I’ll hold down the ALT key and drag the crop outside the image. First on the top of the image, then on the side of the image:

Here is what it looks like before I click the check box on the options bar:

Now the image has a white frame around it. To make it more interesting, I’ll make the frame black. To do this, I’ll use the paint bucket. I’ll make sure the foreground in the color picker is black. Then I’ll click once with the paint bucket on the white frame to fill it:

Next, I’ll use a snow flake paint brush to make the black frame decorative:
      

I’ll use the bracket keys on my keyboard to make the snow flake brush the right size for the frame. I can choose any color I want from the color picker. I think I’ll make the snow flake white. I’ll just hit the “X” key on my keyboard to switch the black foreground to white:

Here’s the finished image. I used five different snow flake brushes from a set of 27, which I’ll give you to download at the end of this tutorial. I overlapped some of them into the photograph, and some I kept in the black frame:

This tutorial is very easy, made for beginners. There are no layers or masks. Just remember, NEVER work on an original photograph. Make a copy first. Then you can play all you want without the worry of destroying your original.

Here are the snow flake brushes to download.

Have fun!