Adobe Photoshop Tutorial: Create A Photo Within A Photo

Step 5: Add A White Stroke To The Vector Shape To Create The Border Of The Smaller Photo

Click on the vector shape layer in the Layers palette to select it, and then click on the Layer Styles icon at the bottom of the palette:

Select Stroke from the list:

This brings up the rather massive Layer Style dialog box with our Stroke options:

There's three options we want to change here, and I've circled them in red in the screenshot above. I've set my Stroke Size to 10px to create a "Polaroid"-size border around my smaller photo. Depending on the size of the photo you're working with, you may find a different value works better. Below that, make sure Position is set to Inside. This means our stroke will appear inside the boundaries of the shape. By default, Position is set to "Outside", which causes the corners of the stroke to appear rounded. We want our corners nice and sharp, and "Inside" does that for us. Finally, by default, Photoshop sets the stroke color to red, which makes absolutely no sense, and obviously we don't want a red border around our image, so change the stroke color to white.

Here's what my image looks like so far with the 10px white stroke applied:

Don't click OK yet though. We have one more layer style to apply.

Step 6: Apply A Drop Shadow

With the Layer Style dialog box still open, click on the very first layer style at the top of the list on the left, Drop Shadow. Make sure you click directly on the words "Drop Shadow" and don't simply click inside the check box to the left of them. We want to bring up the options for the drop shadow effect, and you need to click directly on the words themselves for that.

This changes the options shown in the Layer Style dialog box from the Stroke options to the Drop Shadow options:

The two options we're most concerned about here are the Angle and Distance options, circled in red above. Now, we could start guessing at values and continue entering them in manually until our drop shadow looks the way we want it, but there's a much better way to go about this. Keeping the Layer Style dialog box open and set to Drop Shadow, simply click anywhere inside your image and drag your mouse around. As you drag the mouse, you'll see the drop shadow moving right along with you, and the values for "Angle" and "Distance" changing dynamically as you continue dragging.

I've dragged my drop shadow around and ended up with an angle value of 134 degrees and a distance of 9 px, which looks good to me. When you have your drop shadow placed where you want it, click OK to exit out of the Layer Style options.

Here's my image now with both the white stroke and the drop shadow applied:

Step 7: Use 'Free Transform' To Rotate And/Or Resize The Vector Shape As Needed

If you need to rotate, resize or reposition your vector shape at this point, make sure the vector shape layer is selected in the Layers palette and then use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+T (Win) / Command+T (Mac) to bring up the Free Transform box and handles around the smaller photo.

To move the vector shape, click anywhere inside the Free Transform box and drag the shape to a new location, or use the arrow keys on your keyboard to nudge it. To resize the shape, click and drag any of the Free Transform handles. To simply make the shape larger or smaller while keeping the same proportions for width and height, hold down the Shift key as you drag any of the corner handles. Holding down Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) as you drag will cause the shape to resize from the center rather than from the side or corner opposite from where you're dragging. Finally, to rotate the shape, click and drag your mouse anywhere outside of the Free Transform box. Press Enter or Return when you're done to apply the transformation.

Rotating the vector shape adds a bit more excitement to the image, as I've done below. I've also made slight changes to the size and position of my shape:

Our smaller cropped photo around the subject is now complete. We'll finish the image off by colorizing and blurring the original image in the background next.