Photo Effects: Painted Edges Photo Border Effect

Step 3: Load The "Thick Heavy Brushes" Brush Set

To create our painted edges effect, we need a couple of Photoshop's brushes which install with Photoshop but aren't loaded in by default, so we need to load them ourselves, which is very easy to do. First, select the Brush tool by grabbing it from the Tools palette or by pressing the letter B on your keyboard:

With the Brush tool selected, right-click (Win) / Command-click (Mac) anywhere inside the document window to bring up the Brush tool options dialog box, and then click on the little right-pointing arrow in the top right corner of it:

Then select the Thick Heavy Brushes brush set from the list that appears:

A dialog box will pop up asking you if you want to replace your current brush set with this new one. Choose Append rather than OK, so the new brush set gets added in with the default brushes and doesn't replace them altogether:

Step 4: Choose The "Flat Bristle" 111-Pixel Brush

With the Thick Heavy Brushes brush set loaded, scroll down the list of your available brushes until you get near the bottom of the list, and that's where you'll find the Flat Bristle 111-pixel brush. If you have Photoshop's Preferences set up to show tool tips, the name of the brush will appear when you hover your mouse over the brush:

You'll find two 111-pixels brushes down near the bottom. The one we want first is the one on top, but we'll also be using the one below it in a few moments. Now that we have our brush loaded and selected, it's time to start creating our painted edges effect. First, we'll need a layer mask, and we'll add that next.