Floating Image Over Background

Here's another simple technique to make your photo looks stunning by making it float over its own image background.

Here's how.

1. Run Photoshop (I'm using CS2) and open this image which I have just downloaded from this site. Or you can use your own picture if you like.



2. Next, go to the Layers Palette and double click Background Layer. Just click OK when the New Layer Menu pops up. This is will automatically turn to be our Layer 0.

3. Then, press CTRL + A to select the entire image (or canvas), after that press CTRL + C to copy. The reason why we are doing this is to retain the original size and other details of our image.



Then, press CTRL + D to deselect.

4. Next, go to Image > Image Size (or press ALT + CTRL + I) and adjust the image width and height to 115 %. Since, we are going to use this image as our background you can adjust this to a larger image size.



5. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and adjust the Radius to at least 9 pixels.



6. Then, press CTRL + V to paste the image you copied a while ago. This is automatically our Layer 1.



7. After that, go back to the Layers Palette, double click Layer 1 and in the Layers Style Menu select Stroke and adjust the size of your Stroke to 1 px, Opacity to 100 % and Fill Type to Color (you can also experiment with "Gradient" if you ike, it also gives a very nice effect on your stroke.) Then, choose White (#fffff) for your stroke color. Click OK.



This is now our image with Stroke being applied,



7. Next, apply Drop Shadow and change Angle to 45 degrees, Distance to 10 px, Spread to 5 % then, Size to 8 px. (Please note that you can have your own settings depending on the kind of effect you want on your image.) Click OK when you are finished.



Partially, this is how our image looks like with Stroke and Drop Shadow. (You can actually stop here if you are already satisfied with the result.)



8. Now, to make our image stands out from the background, go to the Layers Palette and click the Create a new layer icon. With the Paint Bucket tool fill our new layer with black (see image 1). Then, drag this layer below Layer 0 (see image 2) and then select Layer 0 (the layer that you just blurred) (see image 3) and adjust Opacity of this layer to at least 80% or depending on the the kind of effect you wanted to achieve.



And finally here is our end product.



Note: Of course you can make adjustments on this layer (Layer 0), you can blur more or you can change its opacity to suit your preferences.

So, that's it. Thank you for visiting my blog.