How To Give an Image a White Border?

Q: I have a black image that I want to put on a black background (for a t-shirt design). I want to give this object a white edge so it shows up better. It's not a square object so I don't mean a photo border. It's quite a complex edge. Is there a way to do this without going over the edges with a white pencil tool?


A: If you can select the whole object with the Magic Wand or Quick Select tool, then after you have your selection go up to the Edit menu and choose Stroke (outline) Selection….

In the Dialog box that appears enter how wide you want the stroke and click on the color box to bring up the Color Picker. You'll see 6 fields. HSB and RGB.

Enter 0 in both the H and S fields and type 100 in the B field to make your stroke white. Click OK.

For Location you can experiment with the 3 choices to see which you like best.

Under Blending, Mode should be Normal and Opacity should be 100%.

Click OK and you will have a white border.

If the Magic Wand or the Quick Select tools don't give you a good selection try using the Polygonal Lasso tool to click around the edge of your image to select it and then choose Stroke (outline) Selection… from the Edit menu.

Good Luck,
Rick