Building a textured border treatment
This month's Painter Wow! tip shows you how to add a natural texrured edge treatment to your painting, illustration or photo. In this tip you will learn how to make a selection and use an Alpha Channel (mask) in the Channels palette in concert with the Express Texture effect to create a textured border for your images.
When painting Daniel at Cosmic Creek, I used the Tapered Camel, Square Grainy Pastel, and Worn Oil Pastel variants of the Art Pen brushes.
Making a soft-edged selection. Open an image that measures approximately 500 pixels wide. Now make a rectangular selection. Choose the Rectangular Selection tool in the Toolbox and make a rectangular selection by dragging to select the area that you want. If you would like to adjust the size of the selection, choose the Selection Adjuster tool and position it over one of the corner handles and drag to change the size of the selection.
When you are happy with the selection, give it a soft edge. Apply a feather by choosing Select, Feather and then typing a number in the field. ( I typed 30.)
Now reverse the selection, in preparation for adding the texture in Step 2: Choose Select, Invert. Save this selection as an Alpha channel by choosing Select, Save Selection. The saved selection will appear as an Alpha channel (mask) in the Channels palette.
Building the textured border.
To add a textured edge to the vignette, in the Channels palette, select the mask, open its eye icon and close the RGB-Canvas eye icon to view the mask in black-and-white. Click once on the Alpha Channel name in the Channels palette to make sure it is selected. Select a rough paper texture from the Paper Selector in the Toolbox (such as Worn Pavement), and choose Effects, Surface Control, Express Texture, and choose Paper from the Using pop-up menu. Adjust the sliders to confine the texture to the soft edge (use the Preview to help fine tune your settings). I used Gray Threshold 75%, Grain, 80% and Contrast 400%. When the edge is as you like it, click OK to accept.
Completing the border on the image. In the Channels palette, click the channel eye icon shut and select RGB. Load the selection with added texture by choosing Select, Load -Selection. To reveal the texture, press the Backspace/Delete key. Congratulations! you have added an exciting texture border to your image.
An award-winning artist and author, Cher Threinen-Pendarvis has always worked with traditional art tools. A pioneer in digital art, Cher has created illustrations using the Macintosh computer for two decades. She has been widely recognized for her mastery of Painter, Photoshop and the Wacom pressure-sensitive tablet, and has used these electronic tools since they were ?rst released. Exercising her passion for Painter's artist tools, Cher has worked as a consultant and demo-artist for the developers of Painter. Her artwork has been exhibited worldwide and her articles and art have been published in many books and periodicals. Cher holds a BFA with Highest Honors and Distinction in Art specializing in painting and printmaking, and she is a member of the San Diego -Museum of Art Artist Guild. She has taught Painter and Photoshop workshops around the world, and is the principal of the consulting firm Cher Threinen Design.