Adding a border can be as simple or complex as you want to make it.  The majority of the frames I put on my photos I do via Shutterfly.com.  That is were I get most of my 4×6 pictures developed for scrapbooking and giving to the family.  It is pretty easy to just add one of their borders online via their programs, right click for the html link and post it to my blog.

Barring that, there are other ways to add borders.  I have a free action called “Bud’s Frames” that I downloaded from atncentral.com.  This action does some of the fancier stuff to put frames on your photos and it does a fairly decent job.  However, most versions of Photoshop Elements doesn’t allow the use of actions. 

Here’s what you can do to make a photoframe.  I’ll start with just the basic black frame.

1.  Decide on the size of frame that you want (i.e. 4×6, 5×7, 8×10, etc.).  Create a new file with those dimensions. 

2.  Add a new layer on top of the existing background layer.

3.  Select the brush and change the brush to be square.  Use the “[” and “]” keys to make the brush bigger or smaller so it is the width you want the frame to be (that’s a shortcut key tip to stick in your hat!).  Set the color in the paint box to black (the top left box).

4.  Place the brush at the corner, hit shift, left click and then pull it across the top.  This will create a straight line when you hit the shift key so you don’t need quite the steady hand.  Next, do the rest of the edges.

5.  If you want it to have an inner edge, then maybe change the color to white, make the brush smaller and do the same click, shift, drag to the inside edges.  You may want to do this on a separate layer, just in case you want to play around with colors and such.

6.  Another way to add another color layer is to use the rectangular marque tool (looks like a rectangle with dotted lines).  Draw a rectangle on the interior of the border.  Go to Edit->Stroke.  Select the color you want and use about 3 pixels for a thin line.  You can play around with inner, outer and center.

7.  Now merge the top layers, and make sure you don’t merge with the background layer (you may just want to delete that layer, anyways).  Save the file as a .psd file so the layer is saved.  The next time you want to add the border to a picture, just hit “V” (another shortcut for the “move” tool) and make sure you have the layer highlighted in the layers box.  Click on the frame and drag it to the picture you want framed.

8.  You now have a border that you can drag onto any of your pictures with those size dimensions!  You can also use it for different sizes and just resize it on the picture, but if the sizes are off too much, then it can look pixelated.

There are tons of posibilities for adding borders to your pictures.  You can download free brushes with squigglies and make frames from those, too. 

Here are a few frames I did that you can download.  They are set up for 4×6, but you can stretch it to fit your canvas.  Click on the link and save the .psd file to your documents.  This should work, but let me know if it doesn’t! 

Black frame with white interior border

Black frame with white stroke

Fancy brush border (seen below – I lowered the opacity of the layer so it is transparent, but you could have it opaque)

Have fun playing!