This effect adds the appearance of a stroke to the edge of a layer’s
contents. How it does so depends on whether you add the stroke to the
outside of the layer’s edges, the inside of the layer’s edges, or
center the stroke on top of the edges. If you add it outside, the effect
is created by putting a layer below the layer the effect is applied to,
and filling it with a one-color mirror of that from the layer above. The
fill is made slightly larger than that above to allow it to project around
the image and appear to be a stroke.
The Stroke effect layer with stroke Position
set to Outside, extracted from the example image at the bottom
of this page, looks like this.
If you choose Inside for the Position setting, the effect is made
by reversing the above. A layer is added above the layer to which the
effect is being applied, and filled everywhere so that it overlaps the
shapes slightly from the outside, like this.
This layer is grouped with the layer the effect is applied to below it,
causing the added color’s visibility to be limited to within the
outline of that layer’s content.
But, if you use a Position setting of Center,
which places the stroke directly over the edges it is applied to (projecting
on both sides), the deconstructed layer looks like this (below).
The layer these circles are on is above the layer the effect is applied
to, and is not grouped with it. See the deconstructed Layers palette for
all three of these at the bottom of the page.
Please note that you cannot actually recreate
layer effects by using the deconstructed layers. For example this effect
using the Outside Position setting, does not show through the interior
content of the layer to which it is applied even if that layer’s Fill
opacity is set to zero. The layers resulting from the deconstruction certainly
do show through if the fill in the overlying layer has its opacity set
to zero.
There are only a few options to choose from in the Stroke effects dialog
box, but they allow for some interesting effects.
- Size - Sets the stroke width.
- Position - Choose whether the stroke is centered on the layer content’s edge, or lies completely within, or outside of the edge (see above).
- Blend Mode - Determines how the stroke will blend with the layers below it. The stroke will blend according to this setting, even if the layer to which the effect is applied has blend mode set to something else.
- Opacity - Set the transparency of the stroke with reference to the layers below the layer it is applied to. In no case will it allow the layer it is applied to to show through.
- Fill Type - This is where things get interesting. From this menu, you can choose to have a pattern fill, or gradient fill for your stroke, or choose the usual (solid) Color fill.
The minute you choose Gradient from the Fill Type menu, the Stroke effect’s
dialog box changes to show the following choices. Please see the Gradient
Overlay page for an explanation of what these options do.
You can choose, edit, and vary the way a gradient is applied using these
settings. Here is an example. I used the settings shown,
to create the gradient stroke shown below.
The gradient used was found by loading an additional gradient set from
the gradient pop-up palette menu.
Below is an example of a pattern stroke. This one was made with the Wrinkles pattern, and a rather wide stroke size.
There is one more option available when you use the Stroke effect. After a stroke has been applied, you can apply an emboss effect to it by then choosing the Bevel and Emboss effect, and selecting Stroke Emboss from the Style menu there.
Here is an example of Stroke Emboss applied to a black circle with a red Stroke effect.
Here is the example image with a Stroke effect applied using the default
settings, though I changed the color to green (the default is red, which
wouldn’t have shown up).
And here is the Layers palette after the effect was deconstructed by choosing
Layer > Layer Style > Create Layers.
First, the results when the stroke is applied to the outside of
the layer’s edges (using the Position setting).
Next, the deconstructed results when the stroke is applied to the inside
of the layer’s edges.
And last, the layers when the stroke is applied with a Center position.
Photoshop Tips | Filler Images
Elements Tips | Shadows and Light
Elementary School | Advanced Elements
FreePhotos | The Belief Game
Table of Contents | Animal Rights
jay@arraich.com | Unreal Nature