Photo Edges with Masks
Created by: Doro Sensen

Masks are a nice way in Paint Shop Pro to display your photos with pretty and unique edges.

We will create three masks for three different kinds of edges: a fade-away mask as one way to achieve the fade-away effect that is so often asked for, one mask made with a filter, and one textured mask. However, there are countless possibilities to create unique masks for your photos – just experiment and have fun!

For this tutorial, you should have a photo ready, or you can download the photo that I have used (some of you will have met my canary Tweetje already in other tutorials). You should also have downloaded Filter Factory Gallery H and extracted it into your plug-ins folder.

Fade-away Mask

Open a new image:
– Width = 200
– Height = 200
– Background = black
– Image type = 16.7 Million Colors

Double-click on the Selection tool in your tool palette to open the "Select Area" dialog box:
– Left = 20
– Right = 180
– Top = 20
– Bottom = 180
– Custom Size and Position = selected

You get a perfectly square selection in the center of your black image.

Go to Selections || Modify || Feather, enter 15 for "Number of Pixels", and click on OK. Your selection now appears much bigger and with rounded corners.

Click on the Flood-Fill tool in your tool palette:

Set your foreground colour to white.

Now click only once into your selection. Your image should look like on the left. Deselect with Ctrl+D (Selections || Select None).

Go to Masks || New || From Image:
– Source window = This Window
– Source luminance = selected
– Invert mask data = unchecked

Your image should now look like on the left. Now go to Masks || Save to Disk and save your mask as "Fade-away.msk" in the default mask folder or into another folder of your choice.

Now you have your mask available to apply to any picture.

Now just open your photo and duplicate it with Shift+D (Window || Duplicate). Go to Masks || Load from Disk, and select your Fade-away.msk which is now applied to your photo.

You'll notice that the photo shines through where your mask image was white. That's the whole trick with masks: White lets your picture shine through, black takes your picture away, and greys blend over.

You'll also notice another nice feature of masks (when loaded from disk): it doesn't matter that your photo has got other dimensions than your mask image, the mask fits perfectly into the photo.

You can now put a new layer behind the photo layer and fill it with the colour, texture or pattern of your webpage background to make the photo blend nicely into your background.

Mask with Filter

Click on your mask image to make it the active image window again, and then click once on the Undo button so you've got your black-and-white image again, and let's make another mask!

Go to Image || Plug-in Filters || Filter Factory Gallery H || Sun Raze:
– Ray Length = 255
– Spikes = 13

Let's make a mask from that image like before: Go to Masks || New || From Image:
– Source window = This Window
– Source luminance = selected
– Invert mask data = unchecked

Your image should now look like on the left. Now go to Masks || Save to Disk and save your mask as "Sun_Raze.msk".

Next step again like before: Open your photo and duplicate it with Shift+D (Window || Duplicate). Now go to Masks || Load from Disk, and select your Sun_Raze.msk to apply it to your photo.

You'll notice that the halos have quite a "soft" edge. That's because we had feathered our selection in the beginning. If we hadn't done that, the effect would be quite different – just try it out!

Last step would again be to put a layer of your website background behind the photo layer.

Mask with Texture

Let's make one last mask with yet another effect! Begin again with a new image:
– Width = 200
– Height = 200
– Background = black
– Image type = 16.7 Million Colors

PSP 5: Click on the Airbrush tool in your tool palette:
– Shape = Square
– Size = 200
– Opacity = 100
– Density = 100
– Hardness = 100
– Step = 1
Click on the Tool Controls tab:
– Paper texture = Moon

(Still PSP 5:) With foreground colour still white, put your mouse cursor over the center of your image; with the brush size of 200 it should fill the whole image with one click. Press it down for a while so that the image is filled with the paper texture, not too dark and not too white.

PSP 6: Click on the Flood-Fill tool in your tool palette and change the Paper Texture to Twigs. Let other settings as are.

(Still PSP 6:) With foreground colour still white, click once into your black image.

(Now again for both versions:) Since the center portion of our photo should be fully visible, we have to make the center white:

Double-click on the Selection tool in your tool palette:
– Left = 30
– Right = 170
– Top = 30
– Bottom = 170
– Custom Size and Position = selected

Then go to Selections || Modify || Feather and enter 10 for the "Number of Pixels", click on OK. The feathering of the selection will make the photo blend nicely into the textured edge.

PSP 5: Click on the Flood-Fill tool in your tool palette and then once into the selection in the center to fill it with white.

PSP 6: Click on the Flood-Fill tool in your tool palette and change your Paper Texture back to None. Then click once into the selection in the center to fill it with white.

To let the texture fade away into our background as well, we'll have to turn the outer edge of our image black, so make black your foreground colour now.

Go to Selections || Modify || Expand, type in 20 for the "Number of Pixels" and click on OK. Next, go to Selections || Invert.

Your Flood-Fill tool is still activated, so click once now into your selection at the image edge to fill it with black, then deselect with Ctrl+D (Selections || No Selection). Since the selection was still feathered, the textures now blend into the black edge.

Well, the last steps like before: Go to Masks || New || From Image:
– Source window = This Window
– Source luminance = selected
– Invert mask data = unchecked

PSP 5: Your image should now look like the top one on the left. Now go to Masks || Save to Disk and save your mask as "Moon.msk".

PSP 6: Your image should now look like the bottom one on the left. Now go to Masks || Save to Disk and save your mask as "Twigs.msk".

PSP 5: Open your photo and duplicate it with Shift+D (Window || Duplicate). Now go to Masks || Load from Disk, and select your Moon.msk to apply it to your photo (see image on the left). Now only put your website background on a layer behind the photo layer.

PSP 6: Open your photo and duplicate it with Shift+D (Window || Duplicate). Now go to Masks || Load from Disk, and select your Twigs.msk to apply it to your photo (see image below with the next paragraph). Now only put your website background on a layer behind the photo layer.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Now it's up to you to develop your very own, unique photo edges: just experiment with black-and-white images with different effects, filters, and settings, feathered or non-feathered selections – the possibilities are really endless! You could even have a different edge for each of your holiday/vacation photos!!! :-))