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Welcome to a short tutorial on how to produce my drop shadow frame
First we need to sort out how big the final border is going to be and where in the frame the picture will sit, and how big and what shape the shadow is going to be. A little
tiral and error to give you a border size you are happy with.
With the resized Photograph in the border where you want it to be we'll begin.
We need to add the shadows for adding later to the action.
Select the pen tool (Shift + P / P) and draw one side of the shadow (we'll duplicate it later)
Make a new layer (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+N) call it shadow
Press D to make sure you have Black as your Background colour, and then fill the path (in the path tool pallet select the menu and fill path...) - make the shadow smaller than you think you need it, we'll enlarge it by using Gaussian blur later to soften the effect..
Duplicate it (Ctrl/Cmd + J), hide the original shadow layer
then goto Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur... (choose a setting of 8.0) this will be the softest of the shadow - select
multiply from the pallet menu and set the opacity to 80%.
Again create a new layer call it Inner Shadow
Holding Ctrl/Cmd click the hidden shadow layer, this will create a new selection (marching ants) in the shape of the shadow on the Inner Shadow Layer. Goto
Select>Modify>Contract>4px
Fill the selection Edit>Fill>Foreground Color (hold Alt/Option and press Backspace)
Goto Filter>Blur>Gassian Blur (Ctrl/Cmd+Alt/Option+F) and choose a setting of 3.0 again select Multiply and an Opacity of 78%.
Right thats 1/2 of our shadow made.. we have to mirror this for the right hand side.. holding Shift click on Background this will select all of the layers from Inner Shadow to Background. In the side menu on the Layers Pallet select Merge Layers (Ctrl/Cmd+E)
Using the Marquee tool (Shift+M/M) select the left hand side of the Background layer..
Duplicate the selection Ctrl/Cmd+J, using the Free Transform - Edit>Free Transform (Ctrl/Cmd+T) flip the layer on the horizontal plain - right click flip horizontal and place
On the right hand side. When in place hit the tick in the info tray (double click inside the transform or press return)
Merge Down - Pallet menu Merge Down (Ctrl/Cmd+E)
Next we're going to add the copyright to the border.
Create a new grayscale document with a transparent Background 141px wide x 19px high, use the Type tool (Shift+T/T) and using a clear typeface (font) type in the Copyrigh info, then when your happy set the Opacity to 50% and save as Copyright 2007.psd in a new Directory/Folder.
Have a logo? we'll add that next.
Adding Logo
Open your logo into photoshop (if its an eps file - rasterize to a hight of 30px) if you're opening a raster file resize to 30px, then drag into the border file (drag the layer from the open logo onto the border file)
If it fits ok, we're in business, save the Logo as PSD file into the same Directory/Folder as the copyright, if not then transform to fit (Ctrl/Cmd+T)
If you've had to resize then copy out into a new document and save.
Now we have to cut the shadow up so that we can make it fit in either portrait or landscape mode.
Using Guides, draw 2 horizontal and 2 vertical lines (the horizontal lines must be the same distance from the left and right side)
Now using the Knife tool (Shift+K/K) slice the corner. Once all the corners have been sliced, rename each to reflect each - top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right
Hiding the photo, Save for web, File>Save for Web (Ctrl/Cmd+Alt/Option+Shift+S) - choose JPEG, Quality 100, Select each of the corners and save to the same Directory/Folder as the copyright
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