Torn Edges: Photoshop Tutorial

Turning a favorite snapshot into art is fairly easy and affordable now that SnapFish, Ritzpics, and even Staples can turn your photo into a poster. However, hanging them so that the picture and frame look like art is an entirely different matter.  Poster frames, with your photo spanning out to its edges, tend to make your photos look too large and lifeless on a wall. 

In this first Photoshop tutorial, I’ll show you how to achieve torn-edges on your photo, to soften the overall feel, while giving the picture a border.  In addition to a poster, this photo effect would also work great on photo cards you can make yourself.

First, open your photo in the Photoshop Editor.

Save your photo as a different name, so that you can keep the original safe.

Complete all of your cropping, and resizing of your photo now. Once you’re satisfied with the final product of your image, go to “Image” then “Resize” and then “Canvas Size.”

Convert to pixels, and create your border.  I gave myself about 250 pixels. Make sure “relative” is selected.

Choose the canvas extension color.  Black, white, whatever you’d like.  In this example, I choose white, as that will be the background color of the poster. Click OK, and now you have a white border.

Next, use your rectangular marquee tool (you could use oval if you want), and draw a small border just to the inside of your photo.  You can see it here as a gray, faint dotted line directly around the edges of your photo.

Then, go to select, inverse.  This allows you to adjust everything outside of this marquee, the dotted line border.

Next go to Filter, brush strokes, and then sprayed strokes.

Now, you have a new window. Set the adjustments to the far left corner to your preferences.  In my example, I moved the stroke length to 20, and the spray radius to 25.  The brush strokes should go horizontal.

Hit OK.

Save your photo, being sure to “save as .jpg. This format allows the photoshop to print your picture.

Next, I converted the photo to sepia, and used typeface to write a caption. I will include these how-tos in an upcoming Photoshop tutorial.