This method works great. I will go through the steps so it is in one post. To make an uneven border, create a white blank image whose outside edge is the size of the far outside edge.

After you load the white blank into the queue, you click the "freehand" button and then drag the real image thumbnail onto the white blank. Then go to the full page editor. If the white is covering the image then right click it and send it to the back. I just used center to get the white blank located in the center of my 8.5x11 paper. Every time you click the image you select between the two pieces.

To do a proper sizing: First put an internal 0.2" border onto the white blank to help visualize what will be hidden under the actual picture frame. Otherwise when you eyeball the real image in you will be influenced by something that is hidden later. Click image to go to the other piece.

Then put whatever border(s) on the actual image and freehand size it into the white blank ignoring the part that goes under the frame. For radically different aspect ratios you have to get a visual balance top to bottom on how much to show (also different for portrait vs landscape) ... just like when you matte. Be sure and recheck/resize the size of your white blank ... it seems to change on occasion ... maybe I am touching it when I drag to size the image. Now, if you intend to have two borders, a thin one surrounding the picture and the second padding the space to the frame (uneven border) then you can make the border on the white blank arbitrarily large to underlap the image or you can delete the white blank border and use a large second border2 on the actual image.

Much harder to explain than to just do it. Works great. Thanks to Terry and Ray.
John

This looks like it is going to work for me. Thanks Terry and Ray.

Terry, When in the editor I put in one dimension and apply it to selected and it scales the image keeping the aspect ratio the same if I say no crop. This wonderful software knows that adding a border internally will not be a perfect linear reduction on both axis of the picture ... it's close but not exact. Thus without doing the math you can get tripped up by the details. By tripped up, I mean unexpected behavior not incorrect behavior.

Thanks,
John

The effect I am looking for is the same as what you do with a matte. You elegantly adapt a different aspect ratio picture to a store size frame. Of course this is on a smaller scale using printed borders since an 8x10 is not a lot of real estate to work with.

So maybe a 2:3 which would be about a 5.88 x 8.82 (this part figured out by the auto scaling). This is surrounded by about a 0.17 border1. Then a selected bigger border which doesn't get tripped up by the auto-scaling and the actual page size which is very hard to do. I was using background color for this other "border2" since it was independent of the process. BUT using background color uses too much ink since I intend to cut this to an 8x10.

So yes, I am trying to white mask outside the 8x10 boundaries. Since another 0.2 also tucks under the 8x10 frame and doesn't contribute to the visuals it gets rather complicated.

I tried Ray's suggestion.

I created a 8x10x300ppi white blank in Photoshop. I put the white image in the queue and added a black 0.2 internal border to account for any picture frame inconsistencies. It has guide lines for cutting which is great. Then I added an image at the 8x10 size thinking to shrink it visually in the full page editor after adding an internal border. Unfortunately you can see only one image in the editor. Then I realized I don't know how to keep these from printing on their own pages instead of both on the same page.

Here is a 2:3 that I was going to print up and into an 8x10 frame for a week ... we have 4 easy-to-swap-pic 8x10's throughout our house that I keep my wife appraised as to my current favorites of the week. So I replace them quite often to keep my family happy. http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnprichard/4407444097/  Thus a need for an easy way. The good ones are big, printed in a lab, and matted if they are going on a wall.

My flickr site has many 2:3 examples http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnprichard

John

I am having a difficult time printing a 2:3 aspect (no crop) into a 8x10 print using 8.5x11 paper. I even upgraded to Studio to get the rulers thinking this would help more (it does but not enough to make me confident). If I use border1 and background and a calculator, I can get a reasonably balanced look to be inserted into a simple store bought frame (if I remember to account for 0.2 used by the frame itself).

The problem with this is that it uses way too much ink on the part I will be cutting away. If the vertical and horizontal borders could be different this would be an easy thing. I have been trying to develop a style that allows me to move between different aspects (2:3, 3:4, 4:5) into an 8x10 print using 8.5x11 paper. I have been unreliable. Looked at crop marks and templates with two borders but really haven't "got" it yet ... the convenience of automatic scaling stings me often.

I have read in this forum about frame cutouts but really don't have any documentation as to how to make one and still they are within the borders of the print so I am not sure how this would help to not print ink where I don't need it.

Are their templates out there that do something like this? or frame cutouts?

John