Step 5: Load A Selection Around The Photo

We'll add a bit of space just inside the edges of the photo as well. Hold down your Ctrl (Win) / Command key and click directly on the layer preview thumbnail for "Layer 1" in the Layers palette:

This loads a selection around the contents of the layer, and if you look in your document window, you'll see that a selection has appeared around the photo:

Step 6: Contract The Selection

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We need to make the selection a bit smaller, and we can do that easily using one of Photoshop's built-in features for working with selections. Go up to the Select menu at the top of the screen, choose Modify, and then choose Contract. When the Contract Selection dialog box appears, enter in a value of somewhere between 5-15 pixels for the Contract By option, depending on the size and resolution of your image. This tells Photoshop how many pixels to contract the selection by, or in other words, how much smaller we want to make it. I'm going to enter a value of 10 pixels:

Click OK to exit out of the dialog box, and the selection around the photo is reduced in size, leaving a bit of room between the selection box and the edges of the photo:

Step 7: Add A Layer Mask

We're going to add a layer mask to "Layer 1". Before we can do that though, we need to have "Layer 1" selected, so click on it in the Layers palette to select it. It will appear highlighted in blue:

Then, with "Layer 1" selected, click on the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:

This adds a layer mask to "Layer 1", and we can see in the Layers palette that a layer mask thumbnail has been added to the right of the layer's preview thumbnail:

Notice that the area that was inside of our selection appears white in the thumbnail, while the area that was outside of our selection appears black. If you're not familiar with how layer masks work and want to learn more, be sure to check out our Understanding Layer Masks tutorial in the Photoshop Basics section of the website.

We're going to create our border effect with our first Photoshop filter next!