Step 15: Apply The "Displace" Filter To The Layer Mask

Now that we've created one or two displacement maps, we can create our photo border effect using Photoshop's "Displace" filter. With the layer mask selected, go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choose Distort, and then choose Displace:

Photoshop's "Displace" filter is actually broken up into two separate dialog boxes. The first one that appears allows us to set some options for how the displacement map is going to affect our image. At the top, you'll see two options - Horizontal Scale and Vertical Scale. These options determine how much of an impact the displacement map will have. By default, both options are set to 10. You can try the default values, but I'm going to increase both of these values to 20. Different values may work better for you depending on the effect you're trying to achieve as well as the size of your photo. Make sure you have the Stretch To Fit and Wrap Around options selected in the dialog box as well:

Click OK when you're done to exit out of this first dialog box, and Photoshop will pop up the second dialog box asking you to select the image you want to use as your displacement map. I'm going to choose the first photo I saved, my "wood-chips.psd" file:

Click Open to exit out of the dialog box and Photoshop will use the displacement map to reshape your photo border! If I look at my image in the document window now, I can see that my border now looks a whole lot more interesting than it did a moment ago:

Step 16: Apply The "Displace" Filter Again Using The Second Displacement Map (Optional)

If you prepared a second image for use as a displacement map like I did, we can use it to add even more interest to our photo border. Since the Displace filter was the last filter we used, we can quickly call it back up again using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+F (Win) / Command+Option+F (Mac). Click OK when the first Displace filter dialog box appears to accept the same settings we used last time, and when the second dialog box appears, select the second image you saved. Here I'm selecting my "tree-bark.psd" image:

Once again, click Open to exit out of the dialog box and have Photoshop reshape your photo border once again, this time using your second image:

You could even try combining a third displacement map if you wanted to, but I'm happy with how my border looks at this point.

If you're happy with the border effect you've created, you can certainly stop here. The plain white border looks okay, but there's lots of ways we can make it more interesting. We'll finish off this tutorial with a quick look at how to add a bit more visual interest next!