Accordion Frame (PSE)

Having fun making a dimensional frame in PSE. It has a bit more steps then in PS CC (PS CC version of tutorial is here) since you have to separate shadows manually. I hope you enjoy making your own “Accordion Frame”. This is done in PSE15.


1. Create a new transparent Workspace. (Mine is 600X600 @ 72 dpi for tutorial purposes) File>New


I will be using the gray and white checked transparency for guidance, but at this point I want to manually add some guidelines to help me and make it easier to get my shapes all the same size. Let’s add a ruler to our workspace.

2. On the top tool bar, choose View>Rulers. That will add a ruler to the top and the left edge of your PSE screen. [Short Cut Key Shift+Ctrl/Cmmd+R] *NOTE if your ruler size shows different numbers than on my screen shots see this note posted here *




3. Now that the ruler is in place let’s go and put in our guidelines. These lines will be invisible when you print, but you can always get rid of them later after you are done with them. Placing your curser on the left side ruler, drag your mouse from the left onto your workspace. Place the turquoise line anywhere you wish, just make sure the line is in between the white and gray box.



I have my line on 46. I am going to add another line, this time as close to 76 as possible.



With lines placed we are going to make a square using either the custom shape tool or the marquee rectangle and flood fill with whatever color you wish. I will use white (Hex ffffff).

4. Draw a square using the Marquee Rectangle Selection or the custom shape tool. Begin your selection/shape on the left guideline. The selection will reflect Width and Height. As you draw make sure W & H are the same size, which is why we are using the guides . Go across for width and down for height. We have already set the width with the ruler guidelines. We just need to make sure the height is the same size as the width. (You can add additional guidelines using the same method as we did for the vertical guidelines for horizontal lines grabbing a line from the ruler at the top to form the horizontal grids.) My square is now complete and approx.. 30Wx30H. (46 to 76 notated by my guidelines.) Use the paint bucket tool and fill the selection with a color. Mine is filled with white Hex #ffffff.



5. Once you have your first square made, we need a second one. (All in we will have 4 square frames, however we are only going to work on two and then will duplicate for the others later.) In the layer panel, duplicate the square by the shortcut key Cmmd/Ctrl+J or withlayer in the layer panel highlighted, right click with the mouse and duplicate layer. You should now have 2 squares in you layer panel, and move the second square vertically under the first square so they will be lined up. [Note: A third way you can also duplicate by the following method: clicking on the square in the workspace and holding down the Alt/Opt Key, drag out a second one and place directly under the original.]



6. Grab the layer in the layer panel and drag under the other layer so the top square will be the top layer in the layer panel.

7. Add two additional ruler guidelines. I am placing mine at 44 of the left and 74 on the right. We will need this so it will help us with the next step of distortion of the squares.



8. With the top square in the layer panel selected, let’s transform it by using the distort tool to adjust the top edge to the left. Image>Transform>Distort

 

8b. Use the little square in the top left edge of the box and move the edge over 2 spots to the left to my number 44 (or whatever space you like… this will need to always be the same. I am using 2 which is why I added the new guidelines of 44 and 74). I will be moving the Right Top box to 74 so the top edge will be leaning to the left.

9. Now we will do the same thing with the second square, only instead of the top edge, we are going to distort the bottom edge the same way.



10. With the distortion done, we will now add a drop shadow to the top distorted square. At the bottom of the layer panel is the style panel. Select drop shadow and use the default “low” shadow. Apply shadow to the square. Default is a 90 degree shadow. If you click on the fx on the layer it will open up the style and change the shadow angle to 45 degrees. At this time you can also adjust size and distance and opacity and color of the shadow as well. Drop shadow is always to taste. Other than degrees I am leaving the setting as default.



11. With your mouse on the fx in the layer, hold down the Opt/Alt key and drag down to the bottom square in the layer panel. This will put the same drop shadow on the top square to the bottom square.


12. We now will separate the shadows from the squares. Select the top square in the layer panel and again double click on the fx to open up the style applied. With this open, on the drop shadow slide the shadow all the way to the left so it is away from the square. Right click and simplify the layer.



13. With this moved over we can now separate the shadow, use the polygonal lasso tool or rectangle marquee and make a selection around the shadow. With the marching ants active, go to Layer>New>Via Cut . This will place the shadow on it’s own layer.




14. Do the same for the lower square.



15. Hold down the Cmmd/Ctrl Key and select both shadow layers and drag below the white squares in the layer panel. Connect them so they meet with no space just like the white squares are. When they are together line them up under the white square.



Highlight them both (both seperated shadow layers) in the layer panel and with the layers highlighted in the layer panel, right click with the mouse and choose merge layers. That will merge the 2 shaow layers together.

 

16. Flip the shadow layer horizontally. Image>Rotation>Flip Layer Horizontally and place it appropriately so it is looking as the squares are coming off the page



17. We now need to make the cut outs for the frame, and also have a place to clip our photo to. Click on the top white square to select it. Cmmd/Ctrl +J to duplicate the top square. After duplicating, click on the duplicate and holding down the alt/opt key, slide in from the bottom square to resize the square smaller than the white square.



18. While the marching ants are still active you can use the paint can and flood fill the selection with a different color like gray. You will be using this later to clip a photo to.



19. With the ants still marching, select the top white square layer and delete. That will create a cut out in the white square layer. Move the gray layer in the layer panel underneath the white square layer which is now like a frame. Add a shadow to the white frame layer. Select Style again and then double click the fx on the layer and change the settings on the drop shadow to angle 45 with distance and size =1 and opacity to 75 with a black color for the shadow as noted below:

20. Now do the exact same step for the bottom square. (I renamed the layers so you can see what I was doing to avoid confusion.)



21. Cmmd/Ctrl and select both the bottom gray and the bottom white frame layers in the layer panel, and move to the top of the layer panel. By doing that, the frame shadow from the top frame will not overlap on the bottom frame.

22. Now we have two frames down, we need to now select all 5 layers and duplicate them.




23. With the 5 top layers still selected on the workspace move them down to meet up with the bottom of the original frames.

 

24. For my page, my frames are too big and all 4 will not fit so I am going to resize all of them together to center and resize. Select all layers in the layer panel and then with the bottom right transform box, go towards the top right until the 4 frames are all inside the workspace and sized to your liking.



25. I would now save this as a psd file so you can reuse the frame over and over. File>Save> and the name of the psd file.

26. Now for the fun of creating your page. Add a background paper and move it to the bottom of the layer panel.

27. Locate a photo(or photos) you would like to use for the frames. You can clip the photo(s) to the gray spots via clipping mask (Opt/Alt+Cmmd/Ctrl+G) . Decorate your page with elements such as stitches and you can even add the same photo to the background by using a brush/mask etc. Add a title and voila!

 

@Cherylndesigns my suggestion is to look at both the PSE and the PS CC tutorials. I know you are on a see-saw beween the 2 but both these write ups will give you different tips to use in both.. like the ruler guides you can use that too in PS CC. I will try over the weekend to also do videos in both programs. Hugs

 

PS... I was asked by someone re the ruler guides as the numbers on her screen were not as "high" as mine were and while mine was set at whatever it came with as I never adjusted the ruler guide, I have checked what my ruler preference was set as so that if you want to have your ruler guide match the setting in my screen shots for the tutorial, here is the information.

To change ruler setting: Edit>Preference>Ruler and set ruler guides as I have below will have the ruler size match what is in the screen shots. [Hope this helps!]

 

Thanks Jenn... I so want to do the videos too but I have been drained literally! Hugs!

 

Thanks Vinnie!

 

Thank you Suzanne I will try and get a video done by the end of the week. DSD had me busy.. I hope you enjoy