how to add a frame to a Photo | Adding Filters

Filters are used to change the appearance of an image, layer or selection in Photoshop. In the Filter Gallery, you can browse through many different types of filters, apply them individually to your image. We'll see how to create a beautiful photo frame. Mainly I'm using filters to create this frame and some layer effects like emboss...

First you should select a canvas. 

Go to File ---> New 

Set the following values

• Width           - 6 inches
• Hight            - 3 inches
• Resolution   - 200 pixels/inch
• Color mode - RGB

Layers Palette

Layers palette is the most important palette in Photoshop. Actually we can't do anything without Layers palette. So here I'm going to explain about it. As I mentioned above Layers palette is the Grand Central Station for managing layers. So I recommend to read this carefully because this is the base of the Photoshop. Layers palette helps us to select objects separately. In Photoshop we can add selections to objects directly which are in separate layers. To do that press and hold Ctrl and click on the layer. Normally Layers palette is positioned on the right bottom of the Photoshop interface. You can see it like this. It will be blank if you do not have any layers in it.

Pen Tool And Selection Tools

    Pen tool is a popular tool in all graphic designing softwares. Because it is the only tool that can draw custom shapes. You can see another four options with the pen tool. They are very useful to edit the object which you have drawn. The It is used to draw custom shapes on a image or a file. In the pen tools palette there are five different options. They are,

• Pen Tool
• Freedom Pen Tool
• Add Anchor Point Tool
• Delete Anchor Point Tool
• Convert Point Tool

There are few more things to know before start using the pen tool.

Lasso Tools

Lasso tools are used to add freehand selections. This tools panel contains three tools.

• Lasso tool
• Polygonal lasso tool
• Magnetic lasso tool

This tools are the most important tools in adding selections. There are few reasons for that. The first one is these are freehand tools except of the Magnetic lasso tool. You can select any shape using Lasso tool or polygonal lasso tool. The Magnetic lasso tool is little bit different with the other two. It is used to select an object which has a clear color difference with the background.

Working with "Marquee" tools

"Marquee" tools are very important in Photoshop . This tool is used to select areas. As an example when you need to add a color to a certain area first you most select which you want to add color. There are few tools to do this.

They are,

• Rectangular marquee tool
• Elliptical marquee tool
• Single raw marquee tool
• Single column marquee tool
• Lasso tool
• Polygonal lasso tool
• Magnetic lasso tool

All these tools are working in the same way.

     Now let's take a deep look at this tool. Before start this lesson open Adobe Photoshop. As I told you before this tool is used to select areas. First you should open an image.

Photoshop Interface

   Now you have a small idea about Photoshop. (If you don't read the article About Photoshop). In this tutorial I will give you a general overview about Photoshop interface. Older virsions are little bit different with this but not much. I have named the tabs. I will describe those for you.

Menu Bar

This is a very familiar one for you. You have seen this in many softwares. You can see this in the top of the Photoshop desktop. This includes several drop down menus.

The main Commands of those menus are given below.

File          :   New, open, save, print,

Edit         :  Undo, forward, cut, copy, past, transform, define pattern, preferences

Undo, cut, copy, past are well known commands.

Transform menu contains some valuable commands. The commands are - Scale, Rotate, Skew, Distort, Perspective, Warp, Flip horizontal, Flip vertical. The most important thing is you should try these commands yourself. It may give you some experience.

About Adobe Photoshop

     Adobe Photoshop is the most famous raster graphic software. It's very easy to work with it. Photoshop is little bit different with vector graphic softwares like Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw. Many people think Photoshop can only edit photos. But that is not true. Photoshop can be used to design bannars, posters & logos.

CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop. Alongside Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Extended, Adobe also publishes Adobe Photoshop Elements and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, collectively called "The Adobe Photoshop Family" by Adobe. In 2008, Adobe released Adobe Photoshop Express, a free web-based image editing tool to edit photos directly on blogs and social networking sites.