Give Me Direction: Photo Mats (Photoshop Elements)

Hello. I love to mat photos that I place into frames. The color of the mat you select can truly make the photo pop. The same goes for paper or digitial scrapbooking.

Do not forget to mat your photos when you digitally scrap. Once or twice even. Play with different colors under your photo to see which really make it pop. My suggestion, with layouts which have more than one photo, is to select one photo to be the main focal point. Double mat this one (in two different colors). This will unconsciously bring more attention to it.

Here are instructions for matting photos in Photoshop and PSE. (There are a few ways to do it but this way is easiest for me.)

Place your photo wherever you want it, then on a new layer {under your photo}, use your square tool - or circle or whatever shape you like - create a shape. Then drag whatever paper you want your mat to be and put it on the layer above your shape, but below your photo, so your layers should look like this:

photo

paper

shape

With the paper layer selected, hit ctrl+g and it will clip it to the shape you created. Once it's placed how you like it, do ctrl+e to merge the paper and shape layers together.

 

You are finished!

“When one begins to purposefully perform acts of kindness, the spirit changes and soon doing good deeds becomes a focal point for our life; doing good begins to be the same as feeling good. The periods of emptiness when we search for the "meaning of it all" begin to fill with acts of kindness.”
- unknown