Or: Something you can do with Photoshop, a little lust, and no life!

NOTE: There are bunches of images here, and some are fairly big, so if your connection is slow, well hang in there! I will break it down into pieces.

This tutorial will show you how you can make a pretty frame for a picture using Adobe Photoshop. There is a commercial plug-in filter used in this tutorial; Extensis PhotoBevel Solo. However, it is used in only one step towards the end, and isn't absolutely necessary for the effect. To produce this tutorial, I also used Paint Shop Pro 5 for screen captures of work in progress, as well as for processing of sample images for the hypertext tutorial. All image work described was done exclusively in Photoshop.

Very pretty, isn't she? She is also pretty easy to work with compared to these two lovely ladies here:

Your image should have 3 layers; 2 copies of the picture and an empty layer on the bottom. By the way, the more observant of you may have noticed the BMP format in the title bar in the cap. The only reason for that is that Internet Explorer 4 saved the picture in that format. Go figure

My working arrangement is like this: the Top layer is the layer I am actually working on for the final product. The bottom layer is cleared for another background to be created. The center copy of the image is for reference purposes, and will be deleted later. That center layer will come in very handy!

The ease of working with this image as opposed to the other two above should now be apparent. The consistent, high contrast background, combined with the very smooth hairstyle makes isolating the girl herself a breeze. The gradient background behind the other blonde from Ingo's means you'll likely be doing a lot of Shift-clicking with the magic wand (unless of course, you set the tolerance value really high) to select the background. For the other lady, you will probably be best served by selecting her surroundings with the lasso. The picture has an overall matching tone to it, so it will be difficult, if not impossible to select with the magic wand without selecting some of her. Even if you tried using the Channels palette, you'll probably have a bear of a time selecting with the magic wand. Plus, the spiked hair of the blonde, as well as the full curls of the brunette will still have you clearing plenty of background from around and inside strands, tuffs, and curls using the lasso. And speaking of that….

Don't get me wrong, it's not impossible to pull the other two ladies from their respective backgrounds! It's just obviously going to be a very tedious experience (especially with our lovely brunette!). Though we may not need to do as much work, our blonde doesn't totally escape the lasso. Whether you're dealing with slick hair with a couple of tuffs or cascades of kinky curls, the operation is the same. Just zoom in tight and use the lasso tool to select and delete the unwanted background areas.

After you delete the background colors (as well as related colors and anti-alias remnants), you'll need to re-construct and smooth out what you have left. In fact, you can see in the screen cap above that we actually have a gap to fill. Take the Eyedropper and sample hair colors and use the paintbrush and pencil tools to fill in hair. You'll also want to draw some hair in some areas for texture. This is where that other copy of the original image comes in handy. It's a very simple matter to turn on/off the center layer and see where you stand. Chances are you will have a bit of reconstructing to do to give texture and depth to the outer edges of the hair, since the background selection process will delete a lot of it. Again, it can be very time consuming, but well worth it in the end!

After you get the colors and strands reconstructed, get the Smudge tool and smudge the strands with a very small brush. Here, I used 41% pressure (which you set in the Options palette). When you are content with the hair, use a bigger brush with the Smudge tool to smooth out the jaggy outside edges of the hair & skin. In cases you may need the lasso selection tool to get rid of big clumps of dark colors. You probably don't need to eliminate every single black-ish pixel, but those big clumps can corrupt a lot of color if you don't whack 'em out of there.

Our lady has very little neck in our picture now, but when we're through with her, she'll have a reasonable neck. Probably not the best neck ever, granted, but one that will work! We don't have a lot to work with, but we do have enough to determine her neck's general size and the shoulder orientation of her pose. We're not gonna make a whole upper body, just a little more neck. This is where the Smudgin' and Fudgin' really happens! Our tools will include the Rubber Stamp tool, the Smudge tool, Paintbrush and Airbrush, and the Eyedropper tool. Also keep that lasso tool handy!

NOTE: I actually deleted the pattern image layer here, but I later regretted it! Hang on to it for now!

Our image is kind of tight, so we need to bulk it up just a little. I used Image-Canvas Size to add 100 pixels to the height, and 50 pixels to the width of the image. I kept the original oriented at the center. Next I took the Arrow tool (top right of the toolbox, next to the marquee box!) and moved the girl's head up higher. Now we have some room to work with! So let the Smudgin & fudgin begin!!!

I started with the Rubber Stamp tool to build a foundation for the shape. Generally, you're going to be painting straight downward with the tool, so you'll need to be in the Aligned mode for the tool (Alt-Click for your source, and then click for the target). I made the Neck/Trapezius junction on her left side lower than the one on her right side. That was a matter of swinging the Rubber Stamp around to paint left. This is obviously NOT the final product! Chances are, it really doesn't look very good and natural. This is ONLY a foundation which must be adjusted by smudging, paint sampling, and even with copy & pasting from the original pattern image. I'm sorry that I don't have any screen caps from this painful experience, and I'm afraid that I'm going to have to cop out with just a weenie excuse that it's a "feel thing" with lots of trial and error. But it can be done! Feel free to cheat any way you must! The finished product looks like this…

Boy, we sure have come a long way, haven't we! Actually, we're halfway home, since all we've done is work on the picture to frame.