Now we're ready to start working on our pretty frame for our pretty blonde!

Okay, how sharp are you? Notice anything different from the picture on the last page? You should, because there's more white space around her here. That's because I reduced the girls image size by Layer-Transform-scale. You can also increase the canvas size and achieve the same result. But either way, we still need a little more room around her.

Remember when we deleted the original image from the bottom layer? Here's why we did it. We're gonna make a prettier one, starting out with a little noise. This is how many a really nice background/pattern begins in Photoshop. We'll be bringing da' noise by Filter-Add noise with amount=180 and a Gaussian type Distribution. Many times in making backgrounds, you'll prefer a Monochromatic noise, but this time, I used colored noise. Then I filled the background with the last foreground color leftover from the painting session (sorry, no RGB info 4 U L ) Instead of Alt-Backspacing for a full strength foreground fill, I filled thru the Fill command in the Edit menu. I Filled at 40% strength in the color mode, and I got this…

Now to the Filter menu for the Dry Brush treatment (in the Artistic department). I put the Size slider at 1, Detail at 8, and Texture at 2.

Then I blurred the background using the Radial Blur. I chose the Zoom method at good Quality with the slider all the way up to 100. Check this out!

Now boys and girls, it's time for a new layer! We'll be using this layer for a stroke on an oval selection. This is what we'll use to make the frame of our picture with.

Ctrl-Click your stroke layer and then activate the background layer. Then copy the background in the selection using Edit-Copy. Paste your copy above every other layer and either duplicate the pasted layer twice, or paste the layer again two more times, and then merge the copies.

Here's the order of your layers, bottom-to-top: you've got the cool background (Layer 0 in the cap below), the pretty girl (Layer 3), your stroked oval (Layer 4), and the copied and duplicated background layer selection (Layer 6). Take your top layer and apply the Radial Blur with the same settings you used for the background except that you trim the amount down to around 18. Again made 2 dupes of this layer and merge the three layers together.

Doesn't look like we've done much of anything, does it? In fact, as I was making this tutorial, I got a little confused about where we were in the process at this screen cap! I know this is a well-compressed JPEG image, but even with its PSD counterpart you can hardly tell anything's happened! Well, we'll fix that! Dupe the top layer again. Then select the hole in the middle of your stroke layer with the Magic Wand. Expand the selection by 10 pixels. Then, activate the top layer and hit the delete key. Next, Ctrl-click your trimmed top ring, invert selection, and then with magic wand Alt-click the center to de-select it. Activate your background layer and hit the delete key. You should get something like this…

Now let's make some HSL adjustments to the top ring layer using Image-Adjust-Hue Saturation. This time, don't colorize, but set Hue to +20, Saturation to +65, and Lightness to -3. Drop down to the next layer and make another HSL adjustment to the same tune for Hue & Saturation, but this time, trim Lightness to -43. Then I merged the two ring layers I just finished working on (Remember, leave the Stroke ring out of any merging! You'll need it later!) Here's what we have after all the HSL work, plus a bonus background effect. I put a mild twirl on the background using Filter-Distort-Twirl. It is a subtle effect, but scroll and compare the images above and below and you'll see a slight bend.

And Speaking of bend, we're rounding the final one!!