Channel 4 Frames

Anyone not living the UK will not have the faintest idea what I'n on about. Over here, Channel 4 (remember we've only got 5 channels) has used a consistent style of showing a circular image in focus, against a blurred version of the image. Often they will have smaller circles around the main image showing titles, times, etc. All in all I've always admired the simplicity and flexibility of this style.

Well, it's not difficult to do, and here it is.

Step 1:

1. Start with the picture you want to frame
2. With the select tool, select a circle within this image and make a copy (Ctrl-C)

Step 2:

1. Then resize the image, your mileage will vary but in this case I've upped it from 150 pixels to 175. Your actual size is going to depend on what else you intend doing with the image.
2. Now paste the circular copy as a new layer (Ctrl-L) twice.

Step 3:

1. Make sure you select the lower layer (you might also want to turn off visibility of the upper layers).
2. Apply a heavy gaussian blur (radius 5+). You might want to do this more than once.

Step 4:

1. Now, for visibility, turn off the lower layer, turn on the second layer, make sure you have that layer selected.
2. With magic wand tool, click outside the image, and invert the selection (Shift-Ctrl-I) so the circle is selected. Then use Selections, Modify, Expand to grow the selection. (In this case 10 pixels).
3. Use the any of the metal sequences described in the Metallics Tutorials

   In brief: fill the whole circle in medium grey; apply Greg's pool shadow; adjust RGB with R=40, G=20,B=0.

4. Finally, add a drop shadow, Opacity=100, Blur=6, Offsets are 0 (zero) - this outlines the whole frame.

Step 5:

1. Turn on visibility of the other two layers again.
2. Now at this stage, we can see we are close, but it could really do with some tuning.
3. Goto the top layer, magic wand select outside the image with feather set to 2.
4. Press delete just to soften the edge of the circle.
5. Next, I think the background frame is too dark (other pictures may be ok, or too light).
6. Add a new layer, just above the background layer
7. Fill it white white
8. Adjust the opacity until you have the effect you want.

Notes:

This tutorial doesn't show it off to its best effect because of the size of the image, at such a small size the pixelation is too heavy, but then you don't want a 500MB download right?

When working at larger resolutions, you will need to adjust the extent to which the gold frame expands and also the amount of drop shadow applied to the frame.

When colouring the frame, if it is for a one off image, choose a style that is sympathetic to the image. If it is for a set of images, you may want to choose a common style for all.

Finally, you may want to use the same style to frame the entire image.