It is now popular to create a montage of your images in one image.  Many wedding albums are produced in this way.  Adding a white (or any colour) border to your image is a good way to separate it from the background or create a tasteful surround for a larger print.

In this guide we will look at how to create a standard album page and add a white border to our images.  We will use keyboard shortcuts quite often so remember that Apple+ will be commands for Apple Mac computers and Ctrl+ will be commands for PC computers. 

1) Start by creating a new document (apple+N or Ctrl+N).  Make the dimensions 10inch x 10inch @ 300 dpi.  You will have a white square, but we need to fill it black.  The easiest way to do this is with keyboard shortcuts.  Press D on the keyboard (this sets your foreground colour to black and the background to white) the press alt+backspace (alt is found in the bottom left corner of the keyboard and backspace is the arrow key just under the F12 / F13 key) 

2) With the blank canvas set to black we now need to add a picture.  Open up any picture. To aid this guide we will resize this image before moving it onto our empty black canvas.  To resize your open picture click on Image (at the top of the screen) then from the menu that appears click on Image Size.  In the new box that has opened, set the longest dimension to 4inch across the longest length and set the resolution to 300dpi.  Then press OK.

3) Now that the image has been resized, we need to move it to our empty black canvas.  We will use the keyboard to do this.  Perform this sequence on your keyboard...

Apple+A or Ctrl+A    - this will select the whole image.

Apple+C or Ctrl+C   - this will copy the selected area.


4) Once you have finished step 2, click back onto our empty black canvas (that we made in step 1) and press on the keyboard...

Apple+V or Ctrl+V   - this will paste the image.

5) Your pasted image is now a new Layer (imagine a single card in a deck of cards).  We can use the move tool (you can select the move tool by pressing V on your keyboard) to place the image anywhere on our black canvas. 

6) When you have decided where the image will go, click on Layer (at the top of the screen) and then hover your mouse over Layer Style which will then display a submenu.  Carefully move your mouse down to Stroke and then click Stroke.

7) Now that you can see the Stroke pallette, click on the 'Position' drop down menu that currently says Outside and change this to Inside.  Now click on the red square at the bottom.  This will bring up a colour pallette, we want to select white from here then press OK.  Finally, use the slider at the top of the pallette to change the weight (thickness) of the border around your image.

8) You can now continue to add images and give them a white (or any colour) border.