Photoshop Elements Tips: Placing Photos in a Frame

[1gr8muggle]

Placing a photo within a frame element is actually very simple with the Magic Wand tool.

Here are some basic steps:

1. Place your photograph on its own layer.
2. Open your frame element, and place it on your layout on a layer above your photograph.
3. Target your photo layer and resize/move your photo around until you have the desired portion of it within the frame. (Hold the shift key while resizing to maintain proportions.)
4. Target the frame layer.
5. Select the Magic Wand tool and make sure "Contiguous" is checked off in the options toolbar across the top of your screen.
6. Click within the frame opening. You should get "marching ants" within your frame.
7. Go to Select>Inverse (Ctrl+Shirft+I on a PC, Cmd+Shift+I on a Mac).
8. Target your photo layer.
9. Hit Delete. This should remove any part of your photo that was not within the frame.

Tip:

If you find that you can see just a hairline of your background between the frame's inner edge and your photo, do the following:

After using the magic wand to select the inside of the frame, go to Select>Modify>Expand and set it to about 5 pixels. Then continue with the steps above.

[seewah]

Cassie,

Thank you SO much for taking the time to post this. Adding photos to frames has been a complete mystery to me until I read this!

[katrinak]

Wow...that's great! I was doing it but in a completely silly way Thanks Cassie

[gibsoncasa]

I have followed the steps to do this and after hitting delete I get this error message:

Could not delete because the pixels in a layer set cannot be edited without simplifying the set. Click OK to simplify the set.

When I click OK. It does nothing. What am I doing wrong?
Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Steph

[colleenstearns]

I tried to use a clipping mask, but it just adhered the paper to the bracket frame and didn't fill INSIDE the bracket. Then, I tried to follow Cassie's directions for filling a photo in a frame. After I hit INVERSE, there were marching ants around the bracket and the outer edge of the background paper. I targeted the paper layer and hit DELETE< and again, it only adhered the paper to the bracket frame.

Does this make sense?

What am I doing wrong?

[salmonberry]

I am very new to all of this, but how I am doing it is putting the photo (resized if necessary) on its own layer, then I add a layer with the frame on top of the photo. The frame covers over the edge of the photo that I do not want. It looks find to me, but I did not do any clipping... is there a problem with this method? I have tried clipping with more than one photo, and it has not worked yet for me.

[calligraphybycarol]

salmonberry, that way works just fine, too, as long as the photo is not bigger than your frame. Sometimes if your photo is bigger, you would need to delete the part that shows outside of the frame, and for that, you can use the method Cassie explained.

[esther_a]

Colleen, I follow Cassie's steps above except at step 5 when I select the Magic Wand tool, I make sure "Contiguous" is checked ON. That way I ONLY select the space inside the frame.
You could try that...
Esther

[salmonberry]

I only realized later that the previous post was old, so I thot I would not get a reply ;0) I finally figured out what I was doing wrong, I was clicking the frame, not the frame opening... another AHa moment for me. Thanks for replies!