Natural light photographer, I thrive on these fleeting moments where the love, joy, or soul shows. My artistic background is always showing through my photography work. You will get the more formal portraits, they are after all, what we are looking for at first . But beyond that, candid moments, soulful mood, unexpected places is also what I want to bring out... I hope you'll like my photographic vision...
Sincerely,
Isabelle ♥

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Free Frames, and two Tutorials

I've been having fun with frames recently, and with my new SoulGlow Light Layers as well :)  I thought it was time for a new freebie and a for new tutorial.

Let's start with the tutorials first, we'll see how to use the SoulGlow Light Layers in the first steps and then we'll use our newly edited photo and make it fit and clip it inside a frame.

What I did looks like this, but this tutorial for Light Layers applies to whatever photo you intend to work with and whatever Light Layer you select.



1.  Open your photo and the Light Layer you want to use (I chose two). I chose "After the Storm" for it's colder tones, my photo having already a lot of blue in it.  Then I thought I would balance the overall tones and skin tone by adding "Misty Dawn".  You chose what you think fits the original photo you plan to work on :)

2.  Drag your Light Layer on top of your photo, resize to fit with the marquee tool.  

3.  Blend the Light Layer using "Soft Light" mode,  I left it at 100%.

4. Drag your second Light Layer (if needed) on top of the previous one.
 5. Blend using "Soft Light" mode again, but this time you may need to reduce the opacity around 75%  to avoid areas that look burned. 

6. Go to Layer > Merge Visible, we need to merge our layers because we are gonna add this photo into our frame next.

That's it!  A couple of fast and easy steps with the SoulGlow Light Layers and your image gained light and more zip.  It's like an instant makeover and I'm really addicted to those new Light Layers, I always start my editing with them now.  Some of them have a subtle texture as well, so I can choose to have light and texture at the same time!

Now let's move on to the framing tutorial.


1. Open the frame you wish to use.  In this case I selected the "Brown Paper frame".

2. Go back to your image.  Image needs to be 6 in X 4 in @ 300 dpi to fit nicely into those frames, so I now need to resize.  I could go to Image > Image size and enter manually the dimensions or I can simply use the frame resizing action already created to give me a 6X4 or a 4X6 if I wanted a vertical layout.  Oh!  I didn't mention, the Frame resizing action is free and included in the following Free Frames Set.  How cool is that?
 3. Now that you have played the resizing action your image is smaller :) 

4. Drag it on top of your frame, image has to be on the top layer, above the clipping mask.
5. This particular frame has a tilted angle, if you wish to give the same angle to your photo, go to Edit > Transform > Rotate.  Rotate slightly your image by one of the corner anchor points until it has the same alignment than your frame,  Click on the check icon when done.

6.  All we need to do now is clip our image in the frame.  If you are not used to clipping masks, this may be new for you but it's really simple.  Move your mouse pointer until it's right on the line separating the clipping mask and your image (little red arrow).  Hold the Alt key with your mouse pointer still on the line, you will see a little clipping icon appear, (two little circles), when you see this icon, click your mouse.  The photo is now clipped to the frame.  Voilà!  You see the little arrow pointing to the layer below?  That confirms your image has been clipped.  If you wish to Unclip, same steps as for clipping.

  If you are still wondering exactly what is a clipping mask, well it masks all parts of the image on the above layer with the shape of the layer it's clipped to.  That's how you can get your images in  fancy cut-out frames or templates.

I hope this two-part tutorial was helpful, now I think we're ready to frame these images :)
And if you wish to add some SoulGlow to them, the Light Layers have just been released in the Boutique.

Framing is nice, but it's easier with pretty frames, so here are some frames I designed for you.  Six different frames in the set, the resizing actions for PSE5&6, PSE 7&up and CS.  If you are new to actions, please go to the Install Actions tab at the top and there you'll find all the infos you need to install them in your editing software.




23 comments:

Elena January 5, 2011 at 9:57 a.m.  

Amazing as always. Thank you so very much, dearest Isabelle!

Unknown January 5, 2011 at 10:32 a.m.  

Gorgeous Isabelle, you rock! Thank you for this lovely freebie. :)
Bonne Année!

Martha January 5, 2011 at 11:17 a.m.  

Omg, how amazing! Thanks so much dearest <3

Lucy January 5, 2011 at 12:03 p.m.  

Thank you for sharing, I shared a link on fb ;)

Kinga January 5, 2011 at 2:20 p.m.  

Thanks Isabelle, the tutorial is great and the freebie is wonderful!

Marcela Feldmann January 5, 2011 at 5:11 p.m.  

Love it, it's beautiful!!!
Thank you - Thank you _ Thank you:)

Anonymous January 5, 2011 at 5:17 p.m.  

Thank you for this tutorial!

Anonymous January 5, 2011 at 6:48 p.m.  

Just a quick note to let you know that a link to this post will be placed on CraftCrave today [06 Jan 01:00am GMT]. Thanks, Maria

Sylvia Cook Photography January 5, 2011 at 8:36 p.m.  

I was finally figuring out last week how to make these sorts of frames too, but you carried it way farther than I did, great job Isabelle.
Thanks for sharing!

Julie E. January 6, 2011 at 5:05 a.m.  

Thanks for the nice frames!

Raquel January 6, 2011 at 7:15 a.m.  

Thank you Isabelle! Thank you So much for sharing. I am going to use them today!

CBH January 6, 2011 at 8:42 a.m.  

Thank you so much for this post. I want to let you know that I posted a link to your blog in CBH Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, under the Page 1 post on Jan. 06, 2011. Thanks again.

Rosie Fluegel January 6, 2011 at 9:06 a.m.  

Fabulous. These are great, Isabelle.

Kamá January 6, 2011 at 9:10 a.m.  

Great, thank you very much!

Aina January 6, 2011 at 1:48 p.m.  

thanks for sharing Isabelle
Aina

Linda January 6, 2011 at 5:46 p.m.  

Hello and Thank you for this tutorial and these frames...

meshell966 January 9, 2011 at 2:37 p.m.  

Thank you Isabelle

ellen kauffman January 10, 2011 at 11:43 a.m.  

Thank you soo much! :)

belle007 January 15, 2011 at 7:32 a.m.  

Thank you very much!

Unknown February 28, 2011 at 8:06 p.m.  

Thank you for your generosity! It is appreciated...

MaryAnn June 27, 2011 at 8:35 a.m.  

Thank you for the free frames. I'm learning CS4. Thanks for the clipping tutorial =)

Photo Booth Chick June 30, 2011 at 4:32 p.m.  

Is there a way to download the free frames set & resizing action without going through MEDIAFIRE? I am not sure what is MEDIAFIRE?

Isabelle Lafrance July 3, 2011 at 10:37 a.m.  

At PictureMe2, no there is no alternative link, Mediafire is a free hosting service :)

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