Truth be told, I wasn’t very impressed with version 3.x of PhotoFrame.
onOne said they heard my feedback loud and clear and felt they had an answer to my complaints. With the 4.0 release, I can honestly say that they were right. They’ve come up with something that I’d actually use and I’m excited about this cool new product.

If there’s one thing that keeps you honest and helps you improve your products, it’s feedback. For example, we heard from PhotoFrame 3 users that it was hard to find frame content and some (okay, more than some) of the frame content wasn’t all that useful. So we fixed it. Don’t believe me?

Read this review of PhotoFrame 4 Professional Edition by Ron Martinsen.

photo credit: dsevilla

This month’s issue of PC Photo magazine has a nice article by Mark Edward Harris on learning how to keep the creative look of Polaroid film alive in the digital darkroom. You can read the article online here.

While the article (and the images by photographer Sachi Kato) are very nice, it assumes that you, as the photographer, have a library of old Polaroid film edges at your disposal to recreate this look.

If you don’t have a these for whatever reason, there’s another way that you can do this in a very quick and easy way.

The method descibed in PC Photo article mentions that Sachi Kato has taken old Polaroid film edges and digitized them for future use (presumably in Photoshop). If you don’t have old Polaroid film edges yourself or if you don’t have a scanner or maybe you just don’t have the time, you do have options if you want to get this look for your photos.

Option 1 – Purchase Edges Online

There are lots of Microstock websites like iStockphoto.com and Fotolia.com (are the ones that I typically go to first) that are a great resource for finding polaroid edges that you can purchase for your own use. Once you purchase a polaroid edge from a Microstock site, you can then bring that file into Photoshop.

From within Photoshop, you will need to create a mask that knocks out the middle of the frame so your photo can show through. Depending on the edge, you may have additional masking work to do as not all Polaroid style film has a clean and easy edge. In fact, I think it’s those edges that are a little more complex that are more compelling to add to your photos. But by all means, take a look online and see what you can find.

One word of caution before you go and buy a bunch of these types of frames online and start using them. Please, please, please read the license agreement before you buy an image like this online. Especially if you plan on selling any of your work using an image like this purchased online. Some licenses may allow you to resell and others may not so be sure to read the fine print. Afterall, you wouldn’t want someone to use your work for more than what they paid for right?

Option 2 – Use PhotoFrame 4

PhotoFrame 4 and PhotoFrame 4 Professional Edition both come with hundreds and hundreds of frames that you can use (without restrictions like some Microstock frames). Among the other benefits of using a product like PhotoFrame 4 is that the work to create the masks or holes for your photo to show through has already been done for you.

PhotoFrame also gives you a couple of other benefits aside from already creating the frames or edges for you. As a plug-in to Photoshop, PhotoFrame is full featured program that gives you the ability to dynamically adjust the size of your original, underlying image layer so you can position and resize it as necessary to get it to fit under the image properly. You can also adjust the blending mode and opacity of the frame edge as well as the color of the edge’s background so it blends in seamlessly with whatever color background the image may be presented on (think of floating your images on your website).

Also PhotoFrame 4 isn’t just about frames. It also comes with a wide selection of texture overlays. One thing that was mentioned in the PC Photo article is how Sachi Kato will desaturate the photo to help get a true Polaroid look as well as overlay a photograph of fog over the image to help simulate film grain. Depending on the texture overlay you add, you can change the blend mode, reduce the opacity, increase the blur and increase the noise to desaturate and add noise all in one step. It really doesn’t get any easier than that!

Here are a few examples of the kinds of polaroid and other film edges that are included in PhotoFrame 4. Keep in mind this is just an sampling. Many of these edges have multiple variations.

If you want to try PhotoFrame 4 for yourself, you can learn more here and download a demo here.

All images copyright Mike Wong unless otherwise noted.

There are two kinds of textures (and frames for that matter) that PhotoFrame recognizes. There are grayscale textures and there are RGB textures. RGB textures are also sometimes referred to as “realistic” textures. RGB textures can be great as backgrounds as well. First I’ll go over how you create a grayscale texture.

Creating Grayscale Textures

First, you’ll need to start off with an image or photo that you want to use as a texture. I find that organic items like tree bark, grass, dirt, rocks and wood work really well. But man made items like metal and brick can work really well also. Don’t limit yourself…be sure to experiment! If you’d like you can download this file of mine as an example.

Okay, so you’ve got your desired texture file. Open it up in Photoshop. Make any adjustments that you want to like Levels, Curves, Brightness, Contrast, etc that you deem appropriate. Then go to the Image menu and choose Mode > Grayscale.

Save the file out as a JPG file. Choose the JPG quality setting that you desire (80, 100, etc). Be sure to give the new JPG file a name that will make sense to you later.

This next step is optional. You can leave your newly created JPG file with the .jpg (or .jpeg) extension or you can change the .jpg (or .jpeg) to .frm. The .frm extension is a PhotoFrame file extension but PhotoFrame will recognize grayscale frames/textures like this if they have either .jpg or .frm. So it’s up to you.

Note: If you choose to save your file as a .frm, you can’t just rename the file in the Mac OS Finder or Windows Explorer. Both operating systems will leave a hidden .jpg file extension. To really change the file extension on a Mac, select the file and choose Get Info. Change the name there. On Windows, select the file, right click and choose Properties. Change the name there.

Finally, from within Photoshop, open any image. Launch PhotoFrame 4 from the onOne menu or from the File > Automate menu. Next, go to the PhotoFrame 4 File meu and choose Import Frame. Here choose the .jpg or .frm file that you created earlier. It will be added to the User category or you can search for the frame with the name of the file.

Note: Some users have reported that the User category doesn’t appear right away. You may have to close and reopen PhotoFrame 4 to force this User category to appear in the PhotoFrame library.

When you apply the texture, be sure to change the blending mode from the Background options palette. Trying changing the color from the default white color to black or something else. Blur and Opacity are good options to experiment with as well.

That’s all there is to Grayscale textures! RGB textures are slightly more involved, but fairly straightforward.

Creating RGB or Color Textures

Creating an RGB texture has a couple of extra steps and a couple of extra files involved but it’s still pretty easy to do. Here’s how.

First, open your desired image in Photoshop. Make any adjustments that you wish. DO NOT convert it to Grayscale – this is an RGB texture afterall! Save the file as a JPG file at the quality setting you prefer. Write down or keep track of the file name – this is very important.

Locate the file in the Finder or Explorer and change the file extension of this file from .jpg to .frr.

Note: You can’t just rename the file in the Mac OS Finder or Windows Explorer. Both operating systems will leave a hidden .jpg file extension. To really change the file extension on a Mac, select the file and choose Get Info. Change the name there. On Windows, select the file, right click and choose Properties. Change the name there.

Before you close this file, go to the Select menu and choose All (or press Cmd-A or Ctrl-A). From the File menu, choose New. You’ll get a new file dialog box and the image dimensions will match perfectly to the RGB texture file you started out with. Don’t click the OK button just yet…

Change the color mode in the New File dialog box from RGB to Grayscale. Now you can click okay. Please note, DO NOT paste the image you just copied. We just needed an easy way to get the correct file size.

Now that we have a blank document, we’re going to fill it with black. Press D to set the default foreground color to black. Press Opt-D (Mac) or Alt-D (Windows) to fill the entire document with black. You could also go to Edit > Fill and choose black if you’re more comfortable using menus instead of shortcut keys.

Next, we need to save this black, grayscale file as a JPG. Go to File > Save As and give the file the same name as the RGB image above. Change the .jpg file extension to .fro. Take this newly named .fro file and duplicate it. You’ll probably get a filename like “my_custom_texture.fro copy”. Take this file and delete the “.fro copy” portion and give the file the extension .fri.

See note above about changing the file name.

These two .fri and .fro grayscale files are basically mask images for the inside (.fri) and the outside (.fro) of the frame file (the .frr file).

The last piece of the puzzle is to have these three files in the same location and import the .frr file into PhotoFrame 4 using the File > Import Frames menu. PhotoFrame 4 will detect the .fri and .fro files and figure it all out.

That’s all there is to it! So have fun creating your own textures and don’t forget to experiment and have fun! If you create a texture that you’d like to share with other PhotoFrame 4 users, consider uploading it to the onOne Exchange community site.

The webinar uses Acrobat Connect so if you’ve never used that before, your browser will prompt you to download and install a free plugin for your browser. Once you install it you’ll be good to go!

I was looking through a couple of our video tutorials for our Photoshop plugins the other day and it dawned on my just how many there are up there. We have 79 videos (in Flash and QuickTime format) that cover all of our plugins for Photoshop. Seventy-nine! Wow. I knew we had a lot, but I must admit, I didn’t realize there were that many.

So be sure to head over to our Tutorials page and check them out! They’re all free of course!

Layer Masks are a great way to selectively edit, show or hide part of a layer in Photoshop in a non-destructive manner. I love layer masks and PhotoFrame (both the Professional Edition and the Standard Edition) have a feature called Layer Mask Mode that allow you to apply a PhotoFrame frame/edge to the layer mask as opposed to a new layer of its own. If you’re wondering why you would want to do this, one reason is if you want an edge to a photo that you’re going to post to the web. Maybe you’ll put the photo on your site which has a black background and you also want to post the finished photo to your flickr account which has a white background. Adding a layer mask with a frame in it allows you to save the file as a transparent PNG file so that one image can be placed on multiple site and no matter what the background color of the site’s page, the edge will look the same as if it blends seamlessly into the page background.

Now that you know what a layer mask is and why you might want do to it, here’s how you actually do it.

Step 1: Open your file in Photoshop (I’m using CS3, but this also works in CS2). If your layer is flat like most files are the first time you open it, you’ll need to convert the layer from a locked background layer into a non-background layer. You can’t add a layer mask to a background layer — there’s nothing behind that layer to let through, plus it is locked.

So double click on your background layer, give it a new name if you want and then hit the return key on your keyboard.

Your new layer will look like this.

Step 2: Now that you have converted your layer, add a layer mask to it by clicking on the layer mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. It’s the third icon in from the left.

By default, adding a layer mask will place the selection onto the layer mask thumbnail. This is so you can quickly start editing the layer mask and not the layer itself. But for this technique in PhotoFrame, you’ll need to click onto the thumbnail of the layer so it is selected. Click on the layer thumbnail so it looks like this:

Step 3: Now let’s go into PhotoFrame. I’m using the Professional Edition, but the Standard Edition works just fine as well.

Once inside the PhotoFrame plug-in for Photoshop, make sure the checkbox at the bottom center of the PhotoFrame window labeled "Layer Mask Mode" IS NOT CHECKED. You don’t want it checked yet so that you can see the changes you’re making to the frame.

Browse through the frames and find the one you like or the combination of frames you like. I’m using one of the frames by Dave Cross that is in Professional Edition of PhotoFrame 3. I set the color of the frame to be black. A quick note about layer masks — in a layer mask, black conceals the layer allowing the layer(s) under it show through. White in a layer mask reveals the layer allowing the layer you’re working on to show. Just remember, when working with layer masks, black conceals and white reveals.

This is what my photo looks like with one of the Dave Cross frames on it.

Step 4: When you’ve got the frame on your image to your liking in terms of shape, combination, size, etc., go back to that layer mask mode checkbox and now click the empty box to activate the layer mask mode. Don’t worry when you see your frame disappear, it’s really still there as you’ll see in a moment.

Now click the Apply button. PhotoFrame will send your frame to the layer mask that you added earlier. When you get back into Photoshop after leaving the PhotoFrame plug-in, your image will have a layer mask on it and look something like this.

Here’s the before image.

So that’s it. If you’re new to Layer Masks, just try this a few times and before you know it you’ll have it down like a pro. One more thing…once you have your PhotoFrame on a layer mask, you can manipulate it all you want using any Photoshop tools and techniques. For example, you can grab the Brush tool, set the color to black, white or some level of gray and then paint out or paint back any part of your photo that the mask might be covering or that you want to cover. Have fun and experiment!

(Photo from Scott’s Blog)

Congratulations Scott, Matt and Dave!

My favorite part of Scott’s blog entry is this:

"I don’t want you to think for one moment that just because we’re on real TV now, that the show will get any better…"

Here’s a link to the whole entry which includes a link to the Fox Business Channel site.