Bubble Letter Photo Frame

A vector drawn M frames a photo of Marilyn Monroe. For this image, the photo was cropped to fit the frame and embellishments were added.

To use frame a photo with one of your vector drawn bubble letters, first duplicate your original photo and create a new image. Add a vector layer named 'frame'. Promote background to a layer.

Open the PSP file containing your bubble letters. Select the letter you want to use as a frame and 'copy'. Select the 'frame' layer in your new image and 'paste' in the bubble letter as a 'new vector selection'.

Use the Pick tool to select the letter and change the Properties. The Properties icon is in the Tool Options palette or you can right click the image for the context menu. The command is also in the main menu (Objects>Properties).

Change the fill color to none/transparent by un-checking the 'Fill' box in the Vector Property dialog. Change the color and width of the outline, if you wish. You could also fill outline with a pattern or gradient. For this great photo of Marilyn Monroe, I used the eyedropper tool to pick a blue from her eyes and enlarged the outline stroke to 10 pixels.

Position the letter over your photo and use the Pick tool to enlarge or reduce the size of the letter to fit the photo. Drag one of the corner handles of the bounding box to change size without changing proportion.

Use the Magic Wand to select the open area inside the letter.
Expand the selection by at least 3 pixels (to guarantee there will be no gaps). Selections>Modify>Expand.
Next, invert the selection. Selections>Invert
Make the photo layer active and select 'Cut'.

At this point there's lots of options for embellishing your frame. You can still make changes in the Vector Property dialog for color and width of the outline. I decided to change the fill color to a blue/white gradient. I then converted the vector layer to raster in order to add an inner bevel. Next I merged the 2 layers and added a drop shadow. As I was looking thru my tubes and considering adding some sparkles, I came across these pretty pink flowers. I think they look nice with Marilyn's pretty picture!

Use framed photo on webpage or blog or print it & cut it out to place onto scrapbook page.

You could also use this method to mat a photo. Your photo layer would be the top layer instead of below the frame.