Getting a Clean Bevel on your Bordered Background

This could as easily be titled "How to get Bordered Backgrounds without Stupid Lines Across Them" but that seemed a bit too long. The problem is that when you bevel a bordered background, you often get beveling on the top and bottom edges as well. When this tiles down the page, you get lines or indentations across our border.

The other solutions I've seen involved adding borders on the top and bottom (which we'll do here too) and then carefully selecting the original area again. There is a slightly easier solution that works well in both PaintShop Pro versions 50 and up. To make the tutorial interesting, we going to add a carved in design to the border.

1. Create a new 100 by 100 pixel image at 72 pixels/inch, RGB 8 bits/Channel. Set your background color to R: 83 G: 133 B:177 and fill the image with the background color.
2. Select the entire image (Selections, Select All) and then save the selection to the Alpha channel (Selections, Save/Load Selection, Save Selection To Alpha Channel...) finally clear the selection (Selections, Select None).
3. Now we're going to place the design on the border. I've used a border ornament I like, but you can use any dingbat character you have. Make the character large enough to fill most of the image but make sure you leave a little space around the design so you'll have room for the bevel.
4. You can easily center the design on the image by clicking on Objects, Align, Center in Canvas. Then create a selection from the text, Selection, From Vector Object and save it to the alpha channel. Now you can delete the vector layer.
5. Load the selection for the design from the alpha channel.
6. Add a new raster layer above the background and make it the active layer.
7. Select Effects, 3D Effects, Cutout and use the following settings: Fill interior unchecked, Interior color: doesn't matter, Shadow color: Black, Opacity: 100, Blur: 3, Vertical Offset: 3, Horizontal Offset: 3.
8. To complete the design, select Images/Effects/Drop Shadow and use these settings: Color: White, Opacity: 50, Blur: 1, Vertical Offset: 1, Horizontal Offset: 1.
9. Save the selection to the Alpha Channel if you want to and then clear the selection. (Selections/Select None) Now we're going to get back to the main topic of this tutorial, the bevel! This is what we have so far:

We're going to add a border to the top and bottom of the image before we apply the bevel.

10. Select Image, Canvas Size. Make the Height: 140 pixels and leave the width the same at 100 pixels. Vertically center the existing image in the resulting image. (Click on the center button in the bottom part of the dialog.)
11. Make your bottom layer active and flood fill it with the background color.
12. Now we're going to add the bevel. Select Effects, 3D Effects, Inner Bevel... and use the following settings:
    
    Bevel: 6
    Width: 8,
    Smoothness: 25
    Depth: 15
    Ambience: 10
    Shininess: 15
    Color: #ffffff (White)
    Angle: 315
    Intensity: 50
    Elevation: 30
    
    Here is the bordered image before cropping:

Almost done now!

13. Load your full image selection from the Alpha Channel. That's Selections, Load/Save Selection, Load Selection From Alpha Channel. Your selection should be #1 if you followed this tutorial.
14. Crop to Selection and... there it is, your original border piece, neatly cropped!

The only thing that remains is to make the image wide enough to tile properly.

15. Set the background color to: R:210, G:223, B:234. Select Image, Canvas Size again and make the width 1600, the height 100. Make sure you click the first button in the second row in the position section at the bottom of the dialog. This should be wide enough to view in almost everyone's browser without tiling!
16. Now add another layer, drag it under the layer with the border on it and fill with the new background color.
17. Save the image as a jpg for use on the web. You're done. Take a look at the final result!

That wasn't so hard, was it? You can, of course, employ all type of techniques to make the bevel, from a simple buttonize command to special beveling filters to BladePro. Whatever you do, you can be sure you won't have any lines across your lovely border.