Sick Of The Rectangle? …Cross The Border!

I am a fan of breaking the rectangle.  95.99999999% of the photographs you see online are rectangles, with the occasional Square or Circle.  Now, I am certainly not the first to put a border around an image, and I most certainly won’t be the last.  Sometimes adding a unique artistic border to a photo can be just what it needs to make an ordinary image extra-ordinary.

Painting Your Border

• Since this is the last step in the evolution of an image, I will assume the image is already in Photoshop and your post processing has already been complete.
• Ensure your image is flattened, and double click the Locked Background layer, in the layers palette, and select ok to make it editable..
• Zoom out to about 16.7%.  To do this, select the Magnifying Glass tool and right click inside your image.  Single click Zoom Out until you are around 16%.

• Create a layer mask.
• Select black and start painting the borders with a paint brush.  I routinely make custom brushes which I will be using in this tutorial.  Free Brushes are available everywhere!  Type free Photoshop Brushes in google and you will find plenty!  Many are great for borders too!
• Start painting black on your layer mask all around the corners and flat edges of the picture.  This is why we zoomed out, if you get a large scale brush and try hitting those edges with it zoomed to fit on screen your brush will disappear.
• I like to change my brush style a lot to make the border appear more random.  Right click inside the image and change your brush and brush size often.

• Go to town on those edges.
• If you go too far, switch to white (x) to paint in areas you accidentally masked.
• Once your border is complete, add a new layer under your background layer and fill it with white with the paint bucket (or fill, Shift+F).

• Double click the photo icon in the layers palette.
• This will bring up the layer blending options.
• Select Drop Shadow and Bevel and Emboss to pull the image off the page.  This step is optional.  I tend to dig the 3-D quality it brings.

• Go to Layer>Flatten Image and you have successfully broken free of the Rectangle!

There are a million ways to do this same process.  In this tutorial I used brushes, but if you can make a layer mask, you can make a border.  Experiment with layer masks, make selections of busted up walls, chipped paint or just about anything.  Get creative with it.