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This tutorial is designed to assist you in using some of the built-in features of Illustrator to enhance/decorate your photos or other images. All levels of users should be able to follow along and complete this tutorial.

Open up your Illustrator program. A new artboard file should open up, but if it doesn't select File > New and you will have a new file ready to use.   Your artboard automatically opens in a Portrait format - if you need to change this to Landscape, you can do so by selecting File > Document Setup.   You should now have the Document Setup dialog box open and can make the necessary changes. There is a section below the width and height boxes giving two choices -  selecting the icon with the person in an upright position will give you a portrait layout, whereas the other orientation option will give you a Landscape layout. Just click the one that you need - For this exercise I used Landscape. You should now bring your main image into Illustrator. You can do this by selecting File > Place or Edit > Paste from the main menu toolbar (if it is already in your clipboard).

Open your Layers palette, if it is not already open, by selecting Window > Show Layers. Your Layers palette should have a single layer at this time.  You want to protect this layer from any accidental unwanted changes. To do this, lock the layer by clicking the square directly to the right of the eyeball. Once this is done you will see that square is now filled with the image of a pencil with a red diagonal line through it and the Layers palette should still contain just one layer. At the bottom of the Layers palette on the bottom right hand side you will find the Create new layer button. Click the icon and a new layer will be created directly above the first layer. We are going to need our Color and/or Swatches palette open to make the color selection for our frame. If they are not open, go ahead and open them now. You can do that by selecting Window > Show Color and/or Window > Show Swatches.

What we want to do now is place our frame around our photo or image. Let’s use a rectangle as an example for this tutorial. On the main toolbar you will find the Rectangle Tool, click on it or use the keyboard shortcut letter M to make the tool active. On the main toolbar, close to the bottom, are two large squares. One square is for Fill, the other square, which has a smaller square inside of it, is for the Stroke.  Located directly underneath the Fill and Stroke squares are an additional 3 smaller squares. The 3 smaller squares are Color, Gradient, and None. These 3 work with your Fill and Stroke squares. For this tutorial we do not want a Fill, so click the large Fill square and then click the small square below for None. Next, we will select our color choice for the frame. Click the Stroke square and make your way to either the Color or Swatches palette. Make a choice by clicking on a Swatch or a Color choice. Once you have done that you will see that the Stroke square contains the color you have chosen for your frame. Okay, we are now ready to place the rectangle around our photo or image. Go to the main toolbar and make certain that the Rectangle Tool is still selected.

Make your decision on placement of the rectangle around the photo or image, and click-drag your rectangle around the photo or image.  Your rectangle should have no fill and a stroke of the color you selected previously. Our next step will be to make a selection from the Brush Libraries. Window > Brush Libraries > Border Sample will open the palette if it is not already open.  There are several default Border Samples available in Illustrator. For this exercise I have chosen Routed. We now need to open the Brushes palette. You can use the shortcut key F5 to do this quickly instead of going through the Window > Show Brushes dialog. There is a triangle located at the top of the dialog window, click that triangle.  From the choices that pop-up select Brush Options.

Take a look at the Brush Options dialog box. There is a section named Size, which contains options for changing scale and spacing. For purposes of this tutorial we will change the Scale option to 150% and leave the Spacing at default. Do not close the Brush Options dialog box yet, as we have one more setting left to make. At the bottom of the box on the left you will see Colorization. We want to make a selection that relates to the way the frame is colored. You have 4 choices; None, Tints, Tints and Shades, and Hue Shift. Select Hue Shift and click OK to close the dialog box.  A pop-up window for Brush Change Alert will now be visible. This window offers you three choices; Apply to Strokes, Leave Strokes, or Cancel. Click Apply to Strokes. Before going any further make certain that the Stroke square on the toolbar is selected and make any color changes you feel are needed. At this point you can add any text or additional decoration that you want to complete the look of your photo or image. And that's it... you're done!  You can see my example image below - I've added a colored background, text, and sunflowers for decoration, but the frame is the same one I have created above.  There are lots of border options to manipulate and many different ways to decorate your photographs - all you have to do is play around and see what looks best.  Have fun!

- Tutorial written by bedlam123

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