Adding a dashed/dotted border around an image (by Vered)

NOTE: This tutorial was created in Photoshop 7 and should be suitable for Photoshop 6. Also, this tutorial assumes you understand Photoshop layers.

Our goal is to add a dashed or dotted frame to an image like the following:

1. Create a new image, transparent background 8x8 pixels in size, RGB colours, 72 resolution:

2. Zoom the image out to the maximum:

3. Select the pencil tool:

4. Choose a single pixel brush. You might need to reset your brushes for this. Check image to see how:

5. Choose your background and foreground colours - we will use black and white for now:

6. Using the single pixel brush, begin filling in the 8x8 transparent image you had opened before according to the following pattern with the black colour:

7. Fill in the remaining transparent section with white. This should be the result:

8. Go to the "Edit" menu, and choose "Define Pattern" from it, give the pattern a name if you wish:

9. Open the image you would like to add the dashed border to. We will need to turn this image into a layer. Check in the "layer palette" if the image is currently a background:

10. To turn a background into a layer, double click on it within the layer palette (i.e., don't double click on the image itself). You will be asked to create a new layer, most likely it will be layer zero:

11. This should be the result:

12. Now Right click on the new layer you just made within the "layer palette" and choose "blending options". Then choose "stroke". We will make a single pixel stroke, inside the image and we will choose to stroke with a pattern, specifically the pattern we just defined:

13. The final result:

14. Here's a few samples of other dashed/dotted lines based on differently defined patterns. I varied colours and sizes:

Red & Black 8x8 pixels

Black & Yellow, 16x16 pixels

Black & Blue, 2x2 pixels.

That's it! It's pretty simple once you do it. You can now make yourself a selection of patterns to save for future use, even define a set of styles from the blending options if you wish. The sky's the limit!

Tutorial by Vered