Framing Tutorial Part 4

This tutorial assumes that you have already completed the getting started and non-standard frames tutorials and are familiar with the basic settings of the framer and how to create and edit actions.

If you haven't already, please load the setup file "Example Frames."

Your DPU window should look like this:

Creating a triple or quadruple matted frame

The framer is designed to easily create double matted frames, but as you will see, you can use digital photo utilities to create an arbitrary number of mats around your image.  But if the Framer utility only supports "Mat 1" and "Mat 2", how do we create more mats?  The answer is surprisingly simple.  We add a second framer to generate the extra mats.  Remember that Actions can have an arbitrary number of tasks that will be performed in order.  All the actions that we have covered so far include a single Framer task that creates the frame followed by a Saver task to save the result.  If we make a slightly more complex Action, we can create one Framer task that just adds 2 mats without a frame.  Then the result of that will be passed to a second Framer task that will add a third mat and a frame.  Finally, the Saver will be used to save the result.  In a previous tutorial, we used the "Modern Frame" Action to create a single matted frame.  This is an ideal starting point since it already has the single matted frame and save tasks configured.

A second Frame Editor window will appear now so to allow you to set the third mat color as well as the Frame and Wall settings.

Tip:  If you would like to save this Action and perhaps add it to another setup, you can right click on the action and choose "Save.." to save this action to a file.  From any other setup, you can then right click and load the action.

Super Shadow Box

As promised in the previous tutorial, we will now work a little more with the Shadow Box effect.  Let's edit it to perform a more complex action.  Now that we know how to combine multiple Framer tasks, we can combine the effect we learned about in the last tutorial (creating a floating image) with the shadow box frame to create a new shadow box effect.  In the previous tutorial, we learned how to use the Frame settings to create a shadow effect.  If we add those before the Shadow Box frame, we can create an interesting effect.

The Frame Editor should look like this:

We have now created a true shadow box look for your image.

Other experiments to try:

Use the Caption utility before the Framer in your action to create a signed image look.

Use the Caption utility after the Framer but before the Saver to place text or graphics (such as the image title) on the mat of your image.

If you find an unusual use for the Framer or any part of digital photo utilities, let us know about it at support@pixlabs.com.

Enjoy!