Diamond Frame Tutorial

Step 1.
Make the foreground colour on your palette white.

Open the picture that you want to frame.
The photo that I used is from Unsplash.com

I resized the picture to 700 x 540 pixels,
but you can use any size you want to. The frame will add 200 pixels
to both the height and depth of the image.

Step 2.
Open the layer palette and see if your picture is on a layer, or a background.
If it is a background, go to Layers...Promote to layer...
We will rename the layers as we go along, as it will make it easier
to know which layer I'm talking about in the instructions.
Double click on the layer in the layers palette and rename it 'picture'

Go to Image...Canvas size...
Select the centre box in the placement section.
In the original dimensions section you will see the current
size of the image. Add 200 to the width and the height
and put the new figures in the height and width boxes.
The background should be transparent.
Your image is probably a different size to mine, so the width and height will not be
the same as this screenshot, but the top, bottom, left and right should all have 100 added

Step 3.
Go to Edit...Copy...(ctrl+C)
Go to Layers...and add a new layer, naming it 'mosaic'
Go to Selections...Select All...(ctrl+A)
Then to Edit...Paste...Into Selection...(shift+ctrl+L)
The image may be a little distorted as the proportions are slightly different
to the original, but this doesn't matter in this case, as we are only going to
be using it for the mosaic border.
Select None.

Go to Layers...Arrange...Send to Bottom...
With the 'mosaic' layer active, go to
Effects...Texture Effects...Mosaic-Glass...
We want to use the default settings, so click on the reset to
default arrow near the top right.

The image should look something like this

Step 4.
Add a new layer, naming it 'rectangle frame', then go to
Layers...Arrange...Bring to Top...
(or drag it to the top in the layers palette)

Flood fill this layer with white.
Select all (ctrl+A)
We are going to modify the selection several times and alternately
delete or flood fill, so don't de-select until I tell you to.

Go to Selections...Modify...Contract...
Contract by 10 pixels, then press the delete key.
Selections...Modify...Contract...10 pixels
Now flood fill with white.

Contract by another 10 pixels and delete.
This time contract by 40 pixels.
Flood fill with white

Contract by 10 pixels and delete.
Contract by 10 and flood fill with white.
Contract by 10 pixels and delete.
Now you can de-select. You should have this.

Step 5.
Select all (ctrl+A) Float (ctrl+F)
Go to Effects...Plugin Filters...
Flaming Pear...SuperBladePro...
Apply the sg_silver preset (or a preset of your own choice). This preset was created
in SBP 180, if you are using a later version of SBP the results may not be the same
Select None.

Activate the Preset Shapes tool and choose Preset Shape. In the shape
list choose Diamond 2 from the dropdown list of shapes.
This is a psp7 shape, which is included in the materials zip

Use line width=10, line style=solid, antialias=ticked.
Retain style=unticked, create as vector=ticked

On the palette use white for the foreground
and transparent for the background.

Step 6.
With the Preset Shapes tool and the diamond frame
layer active draw a diamond shape anywhere on your image.

This will be on it's own Vector layer. You can stretch the shape
to the size you want by dragging the nodes at the top, bottom and sides
I stretched mine to the edges of the image
To make sure it is centered go to Objects...Align... Center in Canvas...

Right click on the layer in the layers palette ad Convert to Raster Layer
Double click on the layer in the layers palette and rename it 'diamond frame'

Step 7.
Select all (ctrl+A) Float (ctrl+F)
Apply the same SuperBladePro preset that you used earlier

We want to select the trianglular area at each corner between the rectangular
and diamond shaped frames. These frames are on separate layers and it's not time
to merge them yet, so we need to make the Magic Wand treat them as one layer.
We can do this by turning off the visibility of all the other layers and ticking
the use all layers box on the tool options, so turn off the visibility of the 'mosaic'
and 'picture' layers by clicking the eyes on those layers in the layer palette.
activate the Magic Wand and use these settings

Mode = Add
Match Mode = RGB Value
Tolerance = 0
Feather = 0
antialias=ticked
Use All Layers box = ticked

Click once in each of the corner triangles (arrowed
in the screenshot).

*note- When you finish, you may want to untick the 'All Layers' box on the
tool options ready for when you want to use the wand again.

Add a new layer naming it 'mirror glass'. Go to Selections...Modify...Expand...
Expand the selection by 1 pixel. This is just to make sure there are no gaps
around the edges when we flood fill, any overlap will be covered because
we will be moving this layer below the frames.

Change to gradient fill in the materials palette. Click the Foreground
and stroke properties box and in the dropdown window of gradients choose
sg_silver-metal
use these settings
Style = Linear
angle = 90
repeats = 0

Flood fill the selection with gradient and then Select None.
Turn the visibility of all layers back on, by clicking the eyes on those layers again
Lower the transparency of the 'mirror glass' layer to 55 on the layers
palette and drag the layer down so that it is between the 'picture'
and 'rectangle frame'. the image should look like this.

Step 8.
Make the 'diamond frame' layer active, then go to
Effects...3D Effects...Drop Shadow...
Vertical = 0
Horizontal = 0
Opacity = 80
Blur = 12

Make the 'rectangle frame' layer active
and apply the same drop shadow to that.
Go to Layers...Merge...Merge all

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.
Thankyou to my great testers

To see my other tutorials click Here

If you wish to contact me you can find an email address to use included on my Site Map
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