Little exercise for all photoshop heroes outthere.....

[Winger69]

This is the task:

I want to create a simple uni-colored border around an image (Layer 1).
The border should be on an extra layer and it should be OUTSIDE the image.




That´s no problem, so far. Now to the tricky part.

The border should have the same thickness at all 4 edges and all 4 corners
should be sharp and clear (no rounding, no blurring!!).



OK. Sounds easy you might think - It isn´t,
because the border should be create via photoshop ACTIONS.

The final action should be suitable for landscape and portrait
orientated pictures and off course as simple as possible.

No 3rd-party plugins please.

BTW: I found 3 different ways so far, but they are not simple enough.

Thanks in advance for your solutions.

Winger69

[Jesters-Ink]

I duplicate the background then in the layers options use "stroke".
Set it to "0" fill.
Set the option for inside, then ramp up the size to fit.
Thats the first one done.

[e-b-o-]

If you want to create an action out of it you'll make your life way more easier if you put your stroke inside your image. This way you support also different image sizes.

So you've to record the folloing steps: select all (crtl + a), go to the menue "edit" ("bearbeiten"), choose "stroke" ("Kontur"), choose size, color, and select "inside" ("innen"), press "ok". That's it.

Another possibility is increasing your canvas size ("Arbeitsflaeche") for 8 additional pixels: this way your stroke will be outside the image if you run your action.

[adlabs6]

I have Photoshop Elements 2, and there are no 'actions' or any macros I'm aware of. Here is my method:

1. Dupicate image artwork layer to create the color border. In this screenshot you see the artwork layer, and the border layer. Using the 'Scale' mode of the 'Transform' tool, I can right click in the value box to select my desired units, here pixels. I then increase each value shown by the amount of pixels I wish for my border. Here I used 20 pixels. So 304px became 324px...etc...


2. Check the result, here at 500% with no blurring or rounded corners.

[BLOWHARD]

I don't get it...you want this perfect border, you want it to be an action and you want it to be easier that just doing it by any non-action method? Why? Are you planning on doing a large batch process? It seems like such an easy simple task doing it without actions...
I'm with Ebo on the canvas size, it's SO easy, even without actions

...is this a trick question?

[Winger69]

Hello fellows,

thank you for your input, so far.

Let me answer Blowhard´s first.
No, this is no trick question.
Yes, I need this action for a huge batch process with pictures of different sizes - landscape and portrait orientation.
And of course - I know how easy this is without using actions.

Adlabs6:

Your method only works for pictures with nearly them same size because photoshop action recording process saves the scale input values in percent
even when I use pixel during the recording process.


e-b-o-

To your first solution.
Yes, it´s much more easier to stroke inside but I need/want it outside.

The 2nd one could be a possebility with a lot of crop, copy and paste.

Jesters

Sorry, I´m a bit confused about your way.



Here is my version:

I start with one layer over the background layer (as you can see at the top of this thread).

Step 1: make a selection of layer 1 (CTRL + left click the layers image inside the layer palette)
Step 2: save that selection (Menu Select - Save selection)
Step 3: duplicate the whole image and load the previous saved selection

For the next steps I´m working with the duplicated image !

Step 4: choose the color for the border and use the command Edit - Stroke to create a border OUTSIDE the image on layer 1
(see Pic 01)

Step 5: make again a selection of layer 1 (CTRL + left click the layers image inside the layer palette)
Step 6: Crop the image (see Pic 02)

Step 7: Fill the complete layer 1 with the same color as the border
Step 8: Use the following commands ´Select - All´ / ´Edit - Copy´ / ´File - Close´

For the final steps I´m working with the original image !

Step 9: Use ´Edit - Paste Into´ and delete the layer mask (see Pic 03)

Step10: Make a selection of the image layer (layer 1) and erase the selected part from the border layer (layer 2)
(see Pic 04)



That´s it. It sounds not very simple, but it works for all kinds of images and it works via actions.

Winger69