Step 4: Add An Inner Shadow

Let's finish off our simple photo frame by giving it a bit of depth, as if the black outer border was in front of the white inner border. For that, we'll add an Inner Shadow. With the Layer Style dialog box still open, click directly on the words Inner Shadow on the left. Once again, make sure you click on the words themselves and don't just click inside the checkbox, otherwise we won't have access to the Inner Shadow's options:

This changes the Layer Style dialog box to show the Inner Shadow options in the middle column. First, lower the Distance of the inner shadow all the way down to 0 px. Set the Choke option to around 65%, then increase the Size of the inner shadow to 100 px:

You may need to experiment a little with the Choke and Size options depending on the size of your image, but if you've been following along using the same values for the Stroke and Inner Glow styles that I've used, the values above should work fine. When you're done, you should have a subtle shadow around the inside of the black border, as if it's raised up a bit from the white border below it. Here's my final photo frame result:

Step 5: Save The Layer Style

Our photo frame is now complete! There may have only been a few steps involved in creating it, but this was just a simple example of what you can do with layer styles. Throw in an Outer Glow style, a Color, Gradient or Pattern Overlay, or a Bevel and Emboss effect, all with different options and settings you'll need to remember and suddenly, having a way to easily save the completed effect so you can instantly apply it again later seems like a pretty good idea.

To save the layer style, click on the New Style button in the top right corner of the Layer Style dialog box:

Photoshop will pop up the New Style dialog box, allowing us to name our new layer style. I'm going to name mine "Simple Photo Frame". At the bottom of the dialog box are couple of options that we can usually ignore because Photoshop does a good job of automatically selecting these options as needed, although it still helps to know what they're used for. The first one, Include Layer Effects, deals with whether or not we want to include the individual effects that we've used such as our Stroke, Inner Glow and Inner Shadow. Technically speaking, these individual styles are called layer "effects", and when you combine them for different results, you end up with a layer "style". However, most people just use the term "layer style" whether they're referring to an individual effect or a combination of several effects. Since we obviously want to include the individual effects that we've used to create our photo frame, this option is automatically selected for us.

The second option, Include Layer Blending Options, is more of an advanced topic and is only important if we made any changes in the main Blending Options section of the Layer Style dialog box. For example, if we had lowered the overall opacity of our photo frame to 50% and we want to use that same lowered opacity setting every time we apply the frame to a new image, we'd want to make sure this option is selected. We didn't do anything like that here, so we can leave this option unchecked:

Click OK when you're done to have Photoshop save the layer style and exit out of the dialog box. You can also close out of the Layer Style dialog box at this point, since we're now finished with our photo frame.

Step 6: Open A New Photo

And with that, our photo frame is saved and ready to be applied instantly to any other image! To show you how easy it is to re-apply the layer style, open a new image. Here's the photo I'll use:

Step 7: Duplicate The Background Layer

Remember that Photoshop doesn't allow us to apply layer styles to Background layers, which means the first thing we'll need to do with our new image is duplicate the Background layer. Go up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen, choose New, and then choose Layer via Copy, or use the faster keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac). Our Layers palette now shows the copy of the Background layer, named "Layer 1", above the original:

Step 8: Click On Your Layer Style In The Styles Palette

You'll find any and all layer styles that you've created and saved, along with the ones that Photoshop loads for us as part of the program, sitting in the Styles palette (with "Styles" being short for "Layer Styles"). By default, the Styles palette is grouped in with the Color and Swatches palettes. You'll need to click on the name tab at the top of the Styles palette to bring the palette to the foreground if it's hiding behind one of the other two palettes in the group. If you don't see the Styles palette at all on your screen, simply go up to the Window menu at the top of the screen and select the Styles palette from the list.

The Styles palette contains small thumbnails of all the layer styles that are currently loaded in to Photoshop, which includes the style we just created and saved. If you have Tool Tips enabled in Photoshop's Preferences, you'll see the names of the layer styles appear as you hover your mouse over the little thumbnails. Any time you save a new layer style, it appears at the bottom of the list in the Styles palette, which means that our "Simple Photo Frame" layer style will be the last one in the list. Simply click on the style's thumbnail to select and apply it:

And just like that, with a simple click of the mouse, the completed photo frame style is applied to the new image:

One important thing to keep in mind is that even though we've saved our photo frame layer style and it's appearing in the Styles palette for us to select and apply whenever we need it, it's currently only saved temporarily. Basically, it's saved inside Photoshop, which is fine until Photoshop crashes and we need to re-install it or we upgrade to a new version of Photoshop. If, for any reason, Photoshop needs to be re-installed, we'll lose our photo frame layer style, along with any other layer styles we've created. Fortunately, Photoshop allows us to save permanent copies of our layer styles (or at least, as permanent as you can get with computers) which we can load back in any time we need them. We'll see how to do that next!

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