Skill Level Needed for this tutorial:
Beginners to Advanced.
Tutorial written for PSP 10 but can be done in lower versions as well.
Items you will need to complete this tutorial:
Triple A Filters Download all of them they are "free"
An Image that has the main portion in the center or close to it like the one below. This is the before image.
This is the After Image
I will not be providing the image for this tutorial. Please find an image that has the "main focus" of the image in the center or very close to the center. Please make your choice of image a jpg and not a gif as I am not teaching how to change the image format in this tutorial!
Step 1:
Open your image in PSP and make a copy so that you are not working on the original image. To make a copy use your keyboard and press the shift key and the letter d at the same time. Then close your original image so you can work on the copy. Save your copy and I like to also save after each step that way I don't loose all my hard work.
Step 2:
Go to your Layer Control Panel and double click on the word "background" accept the default name of Raster 1 or name it something else. This will create a raster layer.
Step 3:
Go to your Layer Control Panel and right click on the raster 1 layer and choose duplicate.
Step 4:
Click on the eye of the top layer to turn it off for a few minutes so you can see what the bottom layer will look like in this step. Click on the bottom layer ( Raster 1 ) and using the slider for Opacity lower the Opacity to around 48% or what you like but it must be lowered. We may need to lower it more later on.
You should end up with something like this.
Step 5:
Make your top layer the active layer by clicking on it.
Step 6:
Go Effects/Plugins/AAA Filters/Transparent Vignette and "Accept" the default setting!
Your Layer will now look like this. You can see that I was on the "duplicated" layer you may need to close the eye on the bottom layer to see this effect properly.
Step 7:
Now we have to create a new layer that we can flood fill before we merge the layers.
Go to your Layer Control Panel and look at the bottom of the Panel and you will see what looks like a piece of paper being turned. Click on it to create the new layer. The new layer will automatically call it self "Layer 1"
Step 8:
On your Layer Control Panel left click and hold the click on the new layer and drag it to the bottom so it is under the other two layers.
Step 9:
We have to fill this layer with a very light color from your image. Click on your eye dropper tool and choose the lightest color you can find and make it your foreground color. Flood fill the bottom layer with your chosen color and then using the same method as it Step 4 Lower the Opacity of the bottom layer to at least 40% or lower it depends on what you like.
Step 10:
Go over to your Layer Control Panel and be sure that ALL layers are visible then right click and choose Merge Visible.
Step 11:
You can now frame your image. I will show you how I framed mine.
Go Selections/All
Go Selections/Modify/Contract
I entered the number of 25 pixels.
Now go Selections/Invert.
You should now have something that looks like this.
Step 14:
Apply a filter of your chose to the selection. For mine I used Super Blade Pro using one of my own settings. Here is what mine looks like now.
Step 15:
You can now save your image for the web if you choose or just keep it in psd format for later use.
This ends this tutorial and I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I did writing it.
Thank you
Lady Gem