Making an outline around an image...

Hi,

I've just rubbed out all the surroundings on a photo, which has left a man with a transparent surface around him. I want to make a gentle 5 pixel black boarder to go around the outside of the man, but I'm not sure how to do it. Can anyone tell me?

Ctrl+Click the layer that man is on.
Select > Modify > Expand .. 5 pixels

Make a new layer below the layer the man is on and fill in the selection. Done

Hope that helps

Ok...just one problem! When I go to 'Select', the 'Modify' text isn't selectable (it's a pale grey color). Why is this?

Did you do the click on the layer with the image in it (on the layer palette)? If you did, you should have the "marching ants" running around your selection.

Other things to check first is make sure the image you want to select around is on an unlocked layer. To accomplish this you may have to save the image as a .psd file first, so that it's not an indexed color image.

Ah, I didn't have my man selected with the marquee tool. Anyway, going to 'Expand' and then '5 pixels' just expands it out without the black colour filling it in to make a boarder. So how can I fill in the expanded boarder with black?

you could try reading the post more carefully for one..

he said after you make the selection you have to make a new layer behind that one and fill it with black

...oooor... Just CTRL+Click on the layer (in the panel), choose tha lasso tool, and RightClick somewhere on the image, and choose "stroke".. Then you choose the 5px thingie, and choose "inside", "center" or "outside".... Could be easier?

>Layer >Layer Style >Stroke

lol torns seems a lil bit easier than all of yours...just make sure you add that extra pixels or the layer>layerstyle>stroke will chop off whats on the edges of that layer. whew if that made any sense lol