Photoshop features a tool that looks, at first, to be somewhat peculiar. It’s called the Marquee Tool; and when used in its Single Row or Single Column format, it basically drags out photo pixels to create a long line of color.

That doesn’t sound like an ideal tool for editing photos, unless you want yours all to have weird stretches in the middle of them where it looks as though a giant pair of hands have pulled someone’s face apart. However, when you remember that Photoshop works on a basic layering principle, you can start to see the framing benefits of creating what are essentially patterns made out of the primary colors of your photo.

Note that the background itself is unrecognizable as an image – it will simply be a colored arrangement of lines, either in a tartan pattern or in a series of vertical and horizontal stripes. Choosing the right picture to turn into the background, then, can be a question of looking for images with the most colors in – and with the most well-balanced set of colors too. You are aiming to create a background over which the original picture can be re-imposed, only smaller – so the colors in the “frame” complement those in the image.

To begin with, make a copy of the image by duplicating the background layer. Then use your copy of the image (layer 10 to create the first stage of your patter).

Select the Single Column Marquee Tool, then click on a colorful part of the picture to select a whole vertical line of single pixels. Make a new layer and copy the selected pixels into it.

You can use Free Transform to stretch the pixels out, left and right, on your new layer until you have a pattern made of colors. The colors are all taken from the heart of your picture and the lines should all be sharp and horizontal.

Now hide your pattern layer. Select the Single Row Marquee tool and perform the same steps over again. When you have finished you will have two layers – one with a brightly colored horizontal pattern and one with a bright vertical pattern. You can blend the two by turning the horizontal pattern layer on again, and then lowering its opacity so that the vertical pattern layer shines through. When the desired affect has been created, you can start messing with the background to make it more impressive.

Blending modes in Photoshop combine the characteristics of different layers. If you select different blend modes in the drop down menu, you will get different effects. For instance, using “multiply” gives much richer, harder colors – this can be ideal for a background framing the picture you took the colors from in the first place.

When you are satisfied with your background, you can put the photo layer back on top of everything else, and shrink it in size so that the background is shown as a framing space behind it. Use the Free Transform tool to change the size of the picture and position it as you wish.

About Author : Marko Jergic is the founder and Managing Director of Enliten IT, software training and a consulting company that provides organizations of all sizes with tailored training solutions on Microsoft and Adobe technologies. He loves writing articles related to Photoshop training in his free time.