Traditionally, we use backgrounds to showcase our pictures. They sit elegantly behind our images, adding texture but never stealing the show. They’re like extras in a movie–they don’t change the story but they create a beautiful environment. Picaboo offers a library of over 20,000 backgrounds, which is more than enough to tell your story.

Sometimes, you want your page to be a little different. Some images are so special, you want them to stand out. This article will teach you how to frame your images using Picaboo backgrounds.

Here’s our starting point: Two silly girls, a heart-themed Picaboo background and a desire to treat this memory a little differently.

Standard image on Picaboo background.

I love the colors in the heart-themed background. But I think this background makes an better frame. So I’m going to change the background from hearts to a custom color using Picaboo’s EyeDropper Tool. This tool allows you to match any color on your page and create a custom background or caption. Here’s how to use our EyeDropper Tool.

Click on “Backgrounds” Tab. Then, click the square color tile next to the navigation arrows.

Click the sqaure color tile to launch Picaboo's EyeDropper Tool.

Select the eyedropper icon and mouse over the image you want to match.  The color will preview in the small window above the dropper.  Click to capture the color you want to use.

 This color will now appear in the “New” panel on the color picker window.Then click “OK” to apply the color to your background.

Create a custom color to match your picture.

Here's my custom-color background.

 Now, let’s make our frame. I’m going to use the heart-themed background for my custom frame. To do this, select the background from the Backgrounds Tab, then click on the tray icon. Just so you know when you select the heart icon, this adds the background to your favorites. (This is a great tool for backgrounds that you use a lot.)

The background is then added to your Photo Tray.

Next, drag and drop the background to your layout. Select “Add New Photo” and the background becomes a moveable image. For this example, I unselected the default white border in the Photo Tools tab.

Add the background to your layout by selecting: Add New Photo.

Reduce the size of your background to frame your picture.

Align the edge of your background to the image.

You can then copy and paste the background to create another border of similar size. Then rotate the image to align with the left-side of your picture. Copy and paste until you have four background frame borders.

Add the background to all sides of your image to form a frame.

You can also create an uneven frame. All you have to do is here is elongate the background borders.

Or turn your picture into a heart or an oval for added dimension using our photo-shaped wells.

Or an oval-shaped photo well.

Here’s an example of a frame made with Picaboo backgrounds for a wedding book. Isn’t it lovely?

A black linen background frames the husband and wife elegantly.

 Have you used backgrounds in a new way? We’d love to hear about it! Share your tip in the comments below!

Looking for more information on Picaboo backgrounds? Check out 9 new ways to use backgrounds, this book, this book and this how-to article.

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