Creating a Picture Frame in Paint Shop Pro X2

 Begin by creating or opening the existing image in Paint Shop Pro that you want to use as the basis for the picture frame. It’s important to consider the original dimensions of this image before you begin the project. Make sure that whatever image you are using to create the picture frame is large enough for the photos you plan to use it with. Paint Shop Pro will adjust the completed frame to fit your photo automatically. However, if you start out with an image that is too small for your photos, the final frame will look blurry. Remember that it’s always easier to make images smaller than to enlarge them.

There are several methods that can be used to make a picture frame in Paint Shop Pro, but we'll walk through one way that takes advantage of some of the software's basic tools.

After opening your image, follow these steps.

Step 1: Make sure that the tools palette is visible. If it's not, you can toggle it by selecting Toolbars from the View menu and then choosing Tools as shown in the image below. (Click any image in this article for a larger view.)

Step 2: There are several options for drawing shapes in Paint Shop Pro. For the purposes of this tutorial, we'll keep it simple for now and just use the Ellipse tool. Select it from the tools palette as shown below.

Step 3: Use the Ellipse tool to draw a large elliptical shape anywhere in the middle of the image. In this example, we'll try to center it as much as possible, but we can always keep making adjustments or crop the image to help with the placement of the object.

Step 4: After drawing the image, we want to flatten the image to make sure all layers are combined. To do this, go to the Layers menu on the main toolbar of Paint Shop Pro, choose Merge and then Merge All (Flatten). (Although not needed for this project, you can find more information on layers in our series on working with layers in Paint Shop Pro.)

Step 5: Now, select the magic wand from the tools palette.

We will use the magic want to select the inner area of the ellipse we've just drawn. After selecting the magic wand, make sure to adjust the selection criteria to Inside on the magic wand toolbar.

With the magic wand still selected, click on the ellipse that was recently created. A dotted line will appear, surrounding the elliptical shape.

Step 6: Select the Eraser tool from the tools palette.

Use the Eraser to erase the interior of the ellipse. Since we used the magic wand to select the ellipse, we can be as messy as we want here with the Eraser tool – it will only remove the area inside the selection.

When finished, our image will look like the one below.

Step 7: From the Selections menu on the main toolbar of Paint Shop Pro, choose Select None in order to deselect any chosen area from the image.

Now the frame is basically done. However, you can still apply additional effects to spruce up the image. For this example, we'll apply a default inner bevel effect to give the frame a more three-dimensional appearance.

The final thing that you need to do before you can use this image as a picture frame is to save it in the proper format. To do this, make sure your image is selected and then choose Export from the File menu. Then select the Picture Frame option as shown below.

When the Export Picture Frame dialog box appears, just pick a name for your picture frame design, type it in, and click Save. Now your design will be available from the Picture Frame option in the Image menu for any future projects.

For more tips and tricks, be sure to check out the other items in Bright Hub's collection of Paint Shop Pro tutorials.