Frame from Pulled Pixels

Nice one Janice.

Thanks, Helen.
Hope we can encourage people to try frame making.

For those not familiar with "pulled pixels" --

Open a photo with varied colors
Using the marquee tool, make a narrow vertical selection from the part of the photo which has your color preferences
Place that selection on it's own layer - Control/Command J will put it on it's own layer
Turn off original photo layer with the eye on the left edge of layer in layer's panel

Now what are you planning to do with your selection?  

If the object is to make a background paper, open a new 3600x3600 project. Place your selection on this new project
Grab the move tool and pull sideways to fill the whole project. You will need to pull from both sides, and probably from top to bottom to make a complete background paper

Once you have your pulled pixel paper - you can do many things with it
Make a frame
Group/Clip it with text or shapes
Layer it with other background papers to add interest to your project

You use it just as you would use any background paper


At one time in my life, everything had pulled pixels on it 



Here are some extra fat pulled pixels made into a template
As you can see, you can use this technique to simulate the look of curtains/drapes

I hope to give this a try later today or tomorrow, Janice.

Visuals

Frame from water
Water is a good choice for a frame because it has varied colors in it and lots of un-eveness - which lends reality to the 'wood' for your frame 

Step 1 - Marquee tool grabs a slice of the water

Step 2 - Move Tool allows you to pull at the sides of the slice until it fills your project

Step 3 - Marquee tool again - to make a rectangular slim selection of your pulled pixels
In this case, I made a horizontal selection from the pulled pixels because that's the 'grain' I wanted for my 'wood'

The width of your pulled pixel selection is governed by how fat you want your frame to be

Duplicate your selection 3 times for a total of four sides - place horizontals on top of verticals -  I flip one vertical and one horizontal, so the inside of the frame has the same colored edge - this is not necessary, but it adds realism to the frame.

if you want a rectangular frame instead of a square one, two of the pieces need to be longer than the other two


Realize, you can just use a slice of a photo to make four sides for your frame, but having pulled pixels imitates wood grain


(See below on how to miter your corners)






Miter your corners

Using Polygonal Lasso tool - make triangular selection of the horizontal strip - delete selection - repeat for each corner
(Make sure you are on the correct layer before making your selection)

The selection of inside corner to outside corner needs to be precise, the rest of your triangle does not need to be precise

Realize each corners selection will have to be in a different direction - if you start on the inside corner and go to the outside corner
the way you need to finish your selection will become apparent

Make sure to merge all four layers of your frame sides prior to adding the bevel layer style.
Sometimes bevel is not enough - you will need to add a shadow, too




Mitered corner close-up

Thanks, Janice.  The visual additions will be very helpful my next go-around with this. This took my quite a bit of time and my results are less than spectacular!