I Need A Tutorial...

[Norma_S]

I learned through trial and error in building my template. Basically, click this button and see what it did. If I liked it, I kept it, if not, on to the next button.

Ditto comes with several templates already done. I also reverse engineered some of them to see how they'd done it.

Overall, I spent several hours playing with it in the beginning. Now, it's finally saving me time.

Norma

[Armadillo]

how about creating your logo and then create a Brush out of it, so when you are ready to place your logo all you have to do is pick the brush tool and click it once wherever you want to place your logo. Good luck

[Wil_Bloodworth]

That is a nice idea but you have to work a lot harder to get your logo to look just right if you use a brush. You could create an action that would create a dynamic logo using a brush which would be kinda cool... but you're still a little limited with a brush... great idea though!

- Wil

[Graydon]

I'm using gimp, but the process should be about the same... and it's what Wil suggested above... took about 15 minutes

New file - set overall size to what you want final image w/ border and logo to be... transparent background

Use the square selection tool to create a border... invert selection and then fill with border color of choice... that's one layer

add text layer for logo and place it about where you normally want it (on border area or wherever)

Save as psd something like border-logo-size...

Now, open an image you want to add border to.. and I actually copy and paste it into the border psd file. In gimp it's a floating layer that has to be turned into a normal layer by clicking the new layer button... and then move the image layer below the border and logo layers...

Keys... need to decide upfront what your final image w/ border size is and how much border you want so that you can resize/crop image files correctly before pasting them in. Which should help with your workflow if you can batch resize if needed.

I can do some screenshots if wanted... but since I'm in gimp... didn't know if it would be useful.

Sample below...

[Wil_Bloodworth]

Graydon: Good post. I've never used gimp but I hear that it is quite sufficient.

Originally, I was having problems with getting layers the correct size of my image... the goal was to have the border always proportional to the image size. To be consistent, I ended up having to resize the image to a standard size and then do all of the border pieces after that. In my frame for example, I set the long side to 3000 pixels and then do all of my manipulations from there on out.

I'm sure there is probably a way to create a proportional frame without having to resize to a standard size... but I don't know what it is. This method works perfectly well for me and it took so long to build this action that I'm sticking with it.

Everyone is welcome to the action that I wrote... if you want.

I'm even thinking of creating a "dropplet" from the action to make it even easier to automate my workflow... just having gotten that far yet. Only images that I put on TPF actually have frames on them so there's no need for them for my "normal" photography stuff.

- Wil

[Graydon]

Wil - thanks.

I've been able to do what I need with the Gimp and the newest release makes things easier.

If I'm understanding your post correctly, I would agree that some action / script that would drop a border around an image no matter what the size of the image was... would be good... but beyond my ability to figure out.... at least for now. : )

[rott]

Originally Posted by ParkImaging

I'm sure there is probably a way to create a proportional frame without having to resize to a standard size... but I don't know what it is. This method works perfectly well for me and it took so long to build this action that I'm sticking with it.

Just had a thought on this. Could you do something like this:

1. Ctrl-A (select all)
2. Transform selection
3. change height and width to 80% (or whatever you prefer, but not a hard-pixel value)
4. Select inverse
5. paint or fill or whatever...

Cool thing about actions is you can just start recording this right smack in the middle of your existing action, then turn off your current border drawing steps that require the 3000 pixel size, and test it out.

[mivy00]

Try this tutorial to get you started
http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/BrandingSM.mov

Then you would only have to add the border before you ran this action. and it is fairly easy to create a border action

[jennisad]

A great site for ant PS tutorial is www.good-tutorials.com.
May find something there