Here's a neat little tutorial for framing your shots using Photoshop.
1. Open the file for the picture that you want to frame. Double-click its layer in the Layers Palette to unlock it so it isn't the background layer.
2. Making your mat:
a. Enlarge your canvas to make room for your mat: Image > Canvas Size and make it the dimensions you want the picture, including the frame, to eventually be. Making it too big won't hurt. Making it too small won't hurt either; you can always change it later.
b. Position your mat layer below your picture: Click the new layer icon next to the bin in the layers palette. Drag this new layer below the picture layer in your layers palette. This layer will be your mat. Double click the layer and label it "mat".
c. To colour your mat choose a shade for your foreground color in your toolbar. Alt-backspace to fill the layer with the colour. (What you do for your mat is completely flexible. I used a dark grey shade and made my noise mono-chromatic and about level 25.Using a lighter shade will make the effects more visible however.)
d. Put a design or texture on your mat: Filter > Noise > Add Noise .. Now let's do something to the noise. There are many ways you can alter the noise to get a cool result for your mat. I'll make some Wheat Thatch paper. Filter -> Brushstrokes -> Crosshatch. Here are the settings that I used for my wheat thatch texture.
3. Make your frame:
Do a LONG side first.
a. I am going to make a sculpted pewter frame for my picture. We will make one long side and then duplicate it for the other three sides. By doing this, we will ultimately have 4 layers for the frame. Click the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette to make a new layer. Using the rectangular marquee, select the area for one of the long sides of your frame.
b. Click your gradient tool and hold for a second, then choose the reflected gradient tool. Make white your foreground color and black your background. In the Reflected Gradient Options, choose "foreground to background". This will give you, in this case, the white -> black. Beginning in the middle of the area you selected, drag a reflected gradient across your frame. Hold Shift to make the gradient go at an exact right angle. I dragged mine horizontally. Ctrl-D to deselect.
(If you are new to this tool, take this opportunity to play with it a bit. Click back in your history palette to undo if you need to, but as long as you are messing in the selected area, you can't do too much damage.
c. Now sculpt it a little. Use the Rectangular Marquee again to make a smaller rectangle inside that one and do a linear gradient from right to left. Ctrl-D to deselect.
d. Drag the frame piece that you have made down to the "New Layer" icon to duplicate it. You need 4 copies, one for each side of your frame.
e. Rotate your frame pieces around so that they are surrounding your picture. Use Edit > Free Transform. Bring your pointer outside of the bounding box and it will turn into a little turning arrow. Hold the Shift key as you rotate the pieces. (What does holding the Shift key do?)
Be sure that you rotate them so that the gradients are going the right way so that they match up in the corners. If you care deeply about the shadows not looking right, you can fix them manually or with lighting effects when you are done, or you can use a different kind of frame on your next project. For now, I will not worry about this.
f. Proportion the space for your picture as you want it; we will trim the long ends of your frame next.
4. Miter your frame:
a. When you line up your frame pieces, be sure that they overlap completely as mine do here. You will see why in the next step.
b. Now trim off the parts of the frame that you do not need. Study the end result for a moment before you read the next part and see if you can figure out how to do it.
c. Choose the Polygonal lasso tool and click in one of the outside corners of the frame. Hold Shift, to constrain your selection to 45-degree increments and then click to the inside of that corner. Click over beyond the outside of the corner that you are getting rid of. Double-click to close the triangle.
d. In your layers palette, select the layer that has the part of the frame that you want to miter. Hit the Delete key. A mitered corner! Ctrl-D to deselect.
e. Once you get the extra overlapping parts of the frame deleted, get rid of the extra parts behind the frame.
f. Merge the layers of your frame by hitting Ctrl-E. Now your frame is all nailed together! Hehe!
6. Apply layer effects to give it that final 3D look:
a. You could call it quits before this, but this last step adds more realism to the project. Select the mat layer in the layers palette and then Layer > Effects. Try a drop shadow with its various settings.. Try the different bevel/emboss settings.
b. Now select the frame layer and do effects there too.
Voila!
And here's the colour shot with a light mat so you can see the texture better.
