Help with an easy thing using Elements

[lwhelan]

Darn it, this is so easy and I can't remember howto do it. I am creating a monogram and then a border to print out on paper to make a note card for my son and I can't remember how to do the border. I used the marquee tool and drew a box but where do I select the pixel size and color of the line. I thought it was on edit under stroke or fill but that won't select for me. Anyone KWIM?

thanks, lynn

[tdavenport]

Lynn,
I'm not sure, but sometimes you may need to simplify your layer and then you'll be able to select stroke. Does that help?

Terri

[rosagirl]

Are you doing the marquee stroke on its own layer? If you happen to be on a text layer, those options are greyed out.

[KellieMize]

The stroke feature of elements isn't great. It only uses a square brush, so when you stroke a box it cuts the corners (leave a little diagonal, if that makes sense.) Here's what I would do:

- Use the rectangular shape tool to draw a large box whose edges are where you want that border.
- Rasterize (simplify) this layer.
- Ctrl and click the layer in the Layers Palette to get marching ants around your box
- Go to Select > Modify > Contract and type in the number of pixels you want as the thickness and hit OK.
- Hit delete