Written By Steve Patterson

In this Photoshop photo effects tutorial, we'll learn how to create a simple three-image photo frame, and when we're done, we'll see how to easily convert the final result into a reusable template using Photoshop's Smart Objects! Smart Objects were first introduced in Photoshop CS2, which means you'll need Photoshop CS2 or higher for the final steps in the tutorial. I'll be using Photoshop CS4 myself. However, if you're using an earlier version of Photoshop, you can still create the actual photo frame itself. The only thing you won't be able to do is convert the images into Smart Objects at the end of the tutorial.

Here's the three-photo frame we'll be creating:

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Let's get started!

Step 1: Create A New Document

Let's begin by creating a new Photoshop document. Go up to the File menu in the Menu Bar at the top of the screen and choose New. Or, for a faster way to create a new document, simply press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+N (Win) / Command+N (Mac):

Either way you choose brings up Photoshop's New Document dialog box, which is where we set the options for our new document. Since I'm going to be placing three portrait-style images side by side each other in a row, I'll need a document that's quite wide, so I'll enter 12 inches for the Width and 6 inches for the Height, making sure that the measurement type is set to inches and not pixels. You may need to enter different values for the width and height if you have a specific document size you want to create. Since I'll want to print the frame effect when I'm done, I'll enter 300 pixels/inch for the Resolution:

Click OK when you're done to accept the settings and exit out of the dialog box. The new document appears on your screen:

Step 2: Fill The New Document With Black

I want to use black for the background color, so I'll go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen and choose Photoshop's Fill command, which allows us to fill a layer or selection with a color:

When the Fill dialog box appears, I'll set the Use option in the Contents section at the top of the dialog box to Black:

Click OK to exit out of the dialog box, and Photoshop fills the document with solid black:

Step 3: Add A New Blank Layer

We need to add a new blank layer. We'll be adding a placeholder for our first image on this new layer. Hold down your Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key and click on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel:

By holding down the Alt / Option key as we click on the New Layer icon, we tell Photoshop to pop open the New Layer dialog box before adding the new layer, and we can use the dialog box to give our new layer a name. Change the name of the new layer from its default "Layer 1" to placeholder left:

Click OK to accept the name change and exit out of the dialog box. If we look in the Layers panel, we can see that we now have a new blank layer named "placeholder left" sitting above the Background layer. The checkerboard pattern in the layer preview thumbnail to the left of the layer's name tells us that the layer is currently blank:

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