Image Borders of Infinite Variety
[ Back to Nightingale's Workshop ]
First, you need to download the following script and unzip it to your Scripts-Restricted
folder: BorderBase Script Bear in mind that the
script is only one step in the tutorial.
Before running the script, set the foreground swatch to the color (or
pattern, texture, etc.) that you want for the border.
Run the script. It will ask how much to contract the selection. Whatever you type in will
be the size of the border base. The script also saves a selection to the alpha channel. You
can leave the default name or give it one of your own.
After you run the script, keep the newly created border as the active layer as shown in
the small screencap below:
The script doesn't do anything else, but now things get interesting ;-)
Go to Effects>Distortion Effects>Displacement Map, and hit the Reset button.
Enable Auto Proof so you can see changes on the image itself.
Choose a different Displacement map and play around with all the settings.
Any variable in the dialog box can be changed (including the map itself), and you
will see wildly varying results.
Depending on your image, base border, and map, some variations won't look as good
as others. Just keep changing things until you see something you like. Even small
changes in the settings can make big differences.
Examples 1 and 2 below use the same base border (fairly narrow, solid white) and
the same Displacement map, but have different settings in the Displacement dialog.
Example 3 uses a wider base border of medium blue, with a different Displacement map
and settings.
Notice what happens when the 'Color' Edge mode is selected, using the color of your choice.
In the example, I used a lighter shade of blue than the one I used for the base border.
If your border covers up or extends too far into parts of your image, it's very easy to fix. You can simply erase the bits that you don't want, or for clean edges as shown in Example 4 below, do the following:
- Selections>Load/Save Selection>Load Selection from Alpha Channel
- Load the selection you made in the script
- Hit delete.
Examples 5 and 6 show more of the kinds of things you can do by experimenting with
the script and Displacement Map.
After hitting Delete as described above, change the active layer to the one with
the picture (i.e. not the border layer).
Choose a different color as the foreground swatch (I used white).
Run the script again, but make the border wider this time.
The result will be something like Example 5.
You can leave that as is, or do even more:
Keeping that border layer active, go to Displacement Map again, and adjust the settings
to your taste.
The result might look something like Example 6.
In general, don't be afraid to experiment ;-)
Here are two more things to try:
After running the script, watch what happens when you lock the transparency of the border layer before using Displacement Map.
Or, try a border that is mostly or completely outside of your image, by increasing the canvas size before running the script.
One last tip: for maximum variety, add your patterns and textures folders to the File Locations for Displacement Maps.
