For PSP 6Home  >  Tutorials  >   Using Filters and Plugins  >
How to Make Your Own Picture Frames
E-mail this tutorial to a friend Email to a Friend

How to Make Your Own Picture Frames
Created by Fried Kampes

 

The 'Picture Frame' is a new feature in PSP 6. It enables you to frame a picture, once you have finished it, with a pre-defined frame that you had before saved on your disk.

I offer several pages of those pre-defined frames, but for those who want to make their own I'll try here to explain how. That is: how I do it ... I'm sure others will have their own way, which may be much better (but my way is a simple one!).
 
Download File SuperBlade Pro Link
For the frame I created in this tutorial I used Super Blade Pro though that's only an option. If you'd like to try out Super Blade Pro you can get it with the download link on the left.
 

New Image

Start with a new image, not too small (I use 600x400 mostly). PSP will fit the picture frame to the image you want to frame, and if the frame is a small one the pixels will become distorted because they must be enlarged too much.

So: Create a new image, 600x400 or more, transparent background, 16 million colors.
 
Go to Selections || Select all. Then to Selections || Modify || Contract, and choose the number of pixels you want your frame to be, then click on OK.
 

Now go to Selections || Invert: now the middle of your image is no longer selected, but the border-to-be is.

Flood-fill the border with the color you want your frame to be, and keep it selected.
 
Now is the time to open Blade Pro (if you have it), or try any of the numerous effects (Menu || Image || Effects) or filters and play with those effects until the frame looks like you want it to be (don't forget: whatever you try, Ctrl+Z will undo it, and you can try again ...).
 

In fact your frame is ready now! But how to get it to appear in the Picture Frames listing?

Simple again: you will have to save it to PSP's 'Frames' directory, and it will have to have the right extension '.PFR'.
 
Standard Toolbar - Save (image) button

You can do one of two things:

a. – save the image (Menu || File || Save as ...) and choose '.psp' as the file extension: your image will be saved as a .psp file. Then go to Windows Explorer or whatever file manager you use, and just change the file extension from '.psp' to '.pfr' which is the extension for PSP 6 Picture Frames, so your file 'noisy.psp' will now be 'noisy.pfr'. The next time it will show up in your list of picture frames.

b. – is an action you have to perform only once:
First go to Windows Explorer or whatever file manager you use, go to the PSP 6 'Frames' directory, and right-click or Shift + right-click (depends on your system) on one of the '.pfr' files you will find there. In the pop-up menu that appears, choose 'Open with ...'. Up pops the 'Open with' dialog:

Browse the list of programs till you get to PSP.exe, hightlight it, check the box that says 'Always use this program to ... etc.', and click on OK.

Now go back to PSP, go to File || Menu || Save as ..., and in the dialog box that appears type in the name ('noisy'). Now in the drop-down menu go to the extension .pfr, and select it. (If it isn't there [on my machine it is not], you can choose the extension .psp, and manually change it to .pfr.) Then click on Save.

The next time you want to pick a picture frame, it will be in the list ...
 
If I told my little story right, this is all you'll have to know to make your own PSP 6 Picture Frames. I told you it is simple, didn't I?