Matting an Image in PSP7

What Color Should I Use to Mat my Picture? Click image for larger view
	When choosing a mat color for your image, you must always keep in mind that the point of matting an image is to enhance the image, not to add to it or to overpower it. The mat color should guide the eye into the image. When a person looks at the image, they should should be seeing the image itself and not being made especially aware of the mat around the image. In this tutorial, we will choose an appropriate mat color and create a sense of depth to the finished piece by using cutouts.
	Make the needed selection Selections->Select All. Selections->Save to Alpha Channel, you can accept the default name. Selections->Select None.
	Find your matting color Method 1: Duplicate the image, Window->Duplicate. On the duplicate, Effects->Blur->Gaussian Blur, use a value between 5 and 20. You want to blur the image so that only color is visible, you don't need any discernible shapes. Use the Proof button to decide how much to blur, you also don't want it so blurred that the whole thing is one color.	See a screen capture of this step.
	Method 2: Duplicate your image and resize the duplicate (Image->Resize) to no more than 300 pixels in the largest dimension using Smart Size. (This is for speed in the next step.) Gaussian blur with a radius of 25-45 (yep, pretty dramatic). Do Colors->Decrease Color Depth->X colors. Set 3 colors, Optimized Median Cut, and Nearest Color. (This method is courtesy Kris Zaklika at Jasc Software).	See a screen capture of this step.
	Choose your matting color On the duplicate, use the Eyedropper tool to choose the two most prevalent colors in the image. Make the foreground color the most prevalent color, the background color the second most prevalent.	See a screen capture of this step.
	Minimize the blurred image, you may want to come back to it later to fine tune the colors you've chosen. Click on the foreground swatch to pull up the color picker, jot down the HSL values. Click on the background swatch, change it's Lightness value to match what you've jotted down from the other color.	See a screen capture of this step.
Click image for larger view	Make the mat Retrieve image dimensions, Image->Image Information. Divide the width of the image by 4, you can round this number to something easier to work with (62 down to 60, etc.) Image->Add Borders, "Symmetric" checked. Enter the number you came up with.	See a screen capture of this step.
Click image for larger view	Optional: Image->Canvas Size. Make the New Width the same as the Current Width. For the New Height, take the number that you used when you added borders, divide by 10. To the Current Height add this for the New Height. Center Image Horizontally is checked, Center Image Vertically is unchecked. Type in "0" for the Top value. What this does is make the bottom section of the mat slightly larger than the other sides.	See a screen capture of this step.
Click image for larger view	Make cutouts to add depth Layer->New Raster Layer. Selections->Load from Alpha Channel. Effects->3D Effects->Cutout. Offsets are -1, Opacity 100, Blur 3, set the Shadow Color to white. Layer->New Raster Layer. Effects->3D Effects->Cutout. Offsets are 3, Opacity 100, Blur 7, set the Shadow Color to black. Adjust the Opacity using the Opacity slider on these two layers, the values will depend entirely upon the color underneath these layers, a darker color will require more opacity than a lighter color.	See a screen capture of this step.
	You may need to further adjust the color of the mat, browns/oranges for example are difficult to get "right". To do this, make sure the bottom layer is active by clicking on it in the Layer Control Palette. Selections->Load from Alpha Channel. Selections->Invert. You can now tweak the mat color by clicking on the background swatch and making adjustments to the HSL values. Use the Flood Fill tool to refill the selection. This should work on most images. Some exceptions I can think of... An image where a blue sky is present, even if this is the second most prevalent color, you generally do not want to mat in blue unless the image is of nothing BUT sky. B&W images should be matted in black, white or a shade of grey. An image where there are only two colors. You may want to mat in one color or the other, try lightening or desaturating these colors. An image that is essentially monochrome. Try matting it in the same color as the image, if this doesn't work, try using the color's complement (red/green, blue/orange, yellow/violet). If the second most prevalent color is a large mass near one edge, you may want to look for the third most prevalent color since using the second color can make it look like that portion of the image is "falling off" into the mat. If all else fails, a solid white or solid black mat is almost never "wrong".