| Fancy Frame Effect Using Blurs
You can buy add-ins for Photoshop
to add fancy frame effects to your images. A previous tip demonstrates
how to add an emulsion-edge
effect to your photos. There's also a learning gallery for adding
a gallery frame effect
to your images and another that demonstrates several frame
edge effects on this site, too.
Here's another frame edge you
can quickly apply to your images.

To get started, you should flatten
the image and convert it to 8-bits. That means, you should be finished
with all of your adjustments. Framing and edge effects should come
at the end of your workflow.

You need to select the Rectangular
Marquee tool and make a selection inside your image to where you
want the frame edge to extend.

The next step is to invert the
selection. Until you invert it, any changes would have an effect
the center of the image. You want to change the edge. You can use
the menu item Select | Invert or use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Ctrl+i
(Shift+Cmd+i on the Mac). This will leave you with a double set
of marching ants.

This next step will only work
if the image is in 8-bit mode. It can also take a minute or two
to run. You want to use the Radial Blur filter to add colored striations
where there is currently detail in the frame area.


Details at the cardinal points
(North, South, East, West) will typically remained unblurred. A
quick round of Gaussian Blur will help smooth out the frame edge,
making it less obvious that a radial blur was used to generate the
frame.

One last touch remains. To add
a stroke of color around the inside of the edge. White is ideal
in this case.


And, there you have it! A snazzy,
multicolored frame effect generated from the outer edge of the image
itself.
Enjoy!
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