Q: How do I put a border around a photo in Photoshop?

A: There are a variety of ways, but here are two basic methods.

The first is to apply a stroke around the image. This is generally used to apply a very small border around the image to help "frame" the image when printed or projected. For example, if the image is relatively light, the image may blend into the paper too much, lacking a defined edge or when you project a dark image the edge can disappear in the black background. To create a stroke, you'll first want to convert the Background image layer to a normal layer by double-clicking it and clicking OK in the dialog box that appears. Then click on the "Add a layer style" button (it has a script "f" on it) at the bottom of the Layers palette and choose Stroke from the popup list. In the Layer Style dialog box select the options for the stroke. Be sure to set Position to Inside, and then set the Size and Colour as desired. Note that the stroke is inside the image will therefore effectively crop the image with the amount of pixels you have allocated for the border.

The other method is to increase the canvas size, which works particularly nice when you want a relatively thick border (and don't want to sacrifice too much of the image in the process). This method requires that you keep the Background image layer as is. Start by setting the background color in the Colour Picker on the Tools palette to the colour you want the border to be. Then select Image > Canvas Size. I recommend checking the Relative checkbox and then entering values for Width and Height that define how much you want to add to the canvas, rather than entering new dimensions for the final canvas. For example, you might enter 1 inch for both with Relative checked to add a one-inch border all the way around the image. When you click OK, the canvas will be enlarged with the new area filled with the current background colour. Because this method increases the size of your image it is always worth while to keep that in mind when you resize your image before you add the border especially if you are restricted to the max. size of your final image. For example, if you are preparing an image for projection and you know that the constrains for the vertical height is 768 pixels and you would like to add a border of 3 pixels around the image make sure that your image is sized to 765 to accommodate the additional 3 pixels you are going to add to your image via your border.