Christmas Day falls on a Monday this year – today, in fact! – and so I’m preparing this in advance, in effect doing on Sunday what I would normally do Monday, which means doing on Saturday what I would normally do Sunday, and so on. AND posting a day early as a Christmas Bonus to readers!

Let me start by wishing everyone reading this a safe and happy holiday period, all the very best to you all!

Okay, with that out of the way…. I was trying to think of a fairly quick and easy topic that would still be of interest while doing things for other campaigns (especially the adventurer’s club, where a backlog of work-to-be-done has built up).

If all that work were complete, My co-GM and I would have adventures ready to run throughout 2024 – except that we recently realized that next year is the Campaign’s 20th anniversary, and are trying to think of something special to mark the occasion.

One of the tasks involved taking some AI-generated art (no, I’m not going to show it here) and putting frames around them. And so a topic was born…

There’s enough connection between this subject and the valuation of artwork that I’m attaching this to the ongoing series dealing with the value of treasures – The Value Of Material Things (series)

…but it’s also fair to say that it connects with the various image editing articles that have been published here, most notably the (still incomplete) Image Compositing for RPGs series..

Baseline

Let’s start with an image – one that’s not AI-generated, for those sensitive to such things, and one free of usage restrictions.

Straight off the Pixabay front page (the current one, it’s generated dynamically and changes all the time, we have this:

A lovely view of a valley, some mountains, clouds, there’s a road – this might get used in all sorts of campaigns.

Variation #1

For example, I might change the vegetation color to a red and use this in a sci-fi campaign for a Barsoom-like world:

Variation #2

Or I could turn it into an oil painting:

But, to be really convincing an oil painting, it needs to be put into a frame.

So let’s talk about frames, and their usage.

Frames

On the internet, for use in web design, there are all sorts of things that are called frames or that are used as frames.

They are used to visually isolate images so that they stand out from the text.

Here’s a lovely example (I’ve added a black background so that contrast makes it really pop, follow the first link to download your own copy if you want to use it!):

Border Frame Usage 1

If I apply that over the top of our mountains, I get:

Notice how the mountain project above and beyond the frame? To fix that, I have a couple of options, and can use them either separately or in combination.

The first is to further reduce the size of the mountain image (or increase the size of the frame, creating ‘negative space’ around the image.

The second is to crop the offending parts of the mountain image.

The third is to go to a lot of trouble removing the horizontal and vertical bars, lengthening them appropriately, then putting everything back together.

Border Frame Usage 2

In this case, a combination of (1) and (2) seems appropriate, and this is the result:

Border Frame Usage 3

Here at campaign mastery, I don’t want anything covering important illustration content, so I use a simple black border as a frame around images, normally 2 pixels wide:

A serious frame

But, in any event, those aren’t the sort of frames I’m talking about. I meant something more like this:

But before I delve into the processes and some tricks and techniques, there are a couple of important questions to discuss.

Why use a frame?

The frame becomes part of the image, making it not just an illustration of something, but an illustration of an illustration of something.

Pictures don’t get frame by accident. Frames are usually cheap relative to the image they contain (especially if we’re talking about a painting), but they aren’t cheap. In the real world, they are meant to protect the object/image that has been framed.

Frames say that the picture/object is/was important to the person who framed it. So that means that the image tells you something, possibly many things, about that person, without the GM uttering a word.

Choice Of Frame

Even more importantly, the style of frame changes the overall perception of the image. Sometimes subtly, sometimes with great gusto and enthusiasm.

It creates a subtext around the image, an additional layer of information.

For example, if you were to put the mountain image into something that resembled a movie frame, you tell a completely different story to the one created by a wooden frame.

More exotic frames

Ragged edges that create gaps and cracks in an image also create a very different subtext, especially if you combine it with a bit of age.

There are a few other exotic-frame tricks as well.

Everyone knows that images are rectangular, for example, so putting an image into a round frame of some sort means that parts of the content have been thrown away.

Again, it’s all about focus and subtext.

Round Frame Example #1

If I use a round frame like the one below and drop our mountain into it, it creates an immediate impression, even if you weren’t paying attention to the frame at all. (I’ve also put some shading into the background).

A couple of points to observe before I move on:

1. Wow, a complete change of focus. The Valley has gone. The road has gone. It’s all about the mountain now.
2. If you look closely you’ll see a subtle little drop shadow over the mountain image on the top right side of the round frame. This helps connect the two.

Round Frame Example #2

If I were to use an entirely different frame, and put something else into the background around the frame, I get an entirely different context and result:

Observe the difference it makes if I use a different background:

Or simply change the color of the background:

The Real Problem with round frames

The real problem with round frames is that it’s a pain somewhere sensitive trying to change the thickness of the frame. It can sometimes be done – and it’s easier with a wooden frame than with something hinting at high tech – but it’s still a colossal pain to try and do.

The Visual Psychology Of Frames

Frames also delineate the perceived edge of an image, separating it from whatever else is there. You can, in this way, turn the image into a location in which the visual of the image is preserved, effectively moving it in time and space and linking the two locations together.

The thicker the frame, the stronger this barrier and the greater the separation between content and surroundings.

Frames help you isolate and concentrate on the image.

When Not To Frame

When an image is supposed to be in some NPCs possession and it’s the sort of thing (like a painting, a portrait, or a family photo) that should be framed, go for it.

When it’s something you’re just showing the players – a landscape, a building, or whatever, or simply showing them who they are talking to, absolutely not.

I’d even go further – even when these points make it clear that it’s possible that an image will be framed, your display only has a limited screen size; inevitably, whacking a frame around an image reduces the amount of screen real estate that can be devoted to actually showing the image.

If there is useful or important information that can be conveyed by the frame, then that price may be justified. Only then would I contemplate actually adding a frame.

There’s one exception to that rule – where I have an image of a location and, for plot or character purposes, I need to insert a picture into the location (a picture on a wall), then if that picture would logically be framed, a frame is justified.

It’s not something that you do all the time. Nuh-uh, no way.

Blindly adding in frames means blindly adding in subtext that might not match up. You can destroy the credibility of an image with that sort of contradiction – in which case, why bother showing the image in the first place?

Be very selective – about when to use a frame and what frame to use.

Beyond The Image You See

Because a frame has to hold a painting or print securely, the canvas normally extends beyond the part that is visible. It has margins, and there can be all sorts of interesting stuff in those margins (if you’re into art history, at least). Shopping lists, phone numbers, remnants of an earlier version of the painting, color experiments, you name it. Frames can conceal a multitude of sins.

To demonstrate this, I’ve taken our mountains image, generated a slightly different oil-paint version of it, and “extended the canvas” to show what might be hidden beneath the frame (and addded a little canvas ‘texture’ as well). The part of the image that’s normally visible is indicated by a dashed white line.

• On the left hand side, at the top, we have some paint being mixed – blue and gray and red and white – but the resulting colors were never used, either being painted over or simply rejected.
• Below that there are a number of color experiments with browns which didn’t work out, either, though some of the green has a significant brown content, so it might exist as an undercoat.
• Along the bottom of the frame, there’s a hint that the painter was thinking about a slightly taller work – there’s more of the valley, and the beginnings of a forest approaching the road. Some of these trees might well have been close enough to the foreground to show individual trunks and branches, which may go some way to explaining the brown experiments, and may also explain why this part was abandoned.
• To the right of that, the painting actually does extend a bit beyond the visible image, but there’s also some bare canvas showing
• The landscape also extends to the right, and some of this is more detailed.
• Unfortunately, it’s marred by a scrawled reminder to himself by the artist – “Call DON”, with “Don” underlined.
• Above this there’s a little more bare canvas showing and then we discover that the brighter blue path of sky in the top-right corner actually conceals a coffee-stain, the remnants of which are still visible!
• Across the top, and going from right-to-left so that we end up where we started, there’s more plain canvas and then a suggestion of a much darker sky. The color evidently wasn’t quite right, but with a bit more blue added, you get the color of the more distant mountains.
• Finally, across some mostly bare canvas, we have a note, “127.65”. Is it a measurement? A bill to be paid? An amount owing? We may never know.

Anatomy Of A Frame

It can be helpful to understand just what’s IN a frame. They are more complicated (and interesting) than they look!

I threw this diagram together fairly quickly, so it’s not perfect, but it will do the job.

(a) is our picture, with the bits that you normally don’t get to see.

The canvas is stretched over a simple frame, (b) and usually held in place by glue and tacks or staples. This frame, and the back of the canvas, are other places to look for hidden secrets.

Together, (a) and (b) are considered ‘the painting’.

(c) is the first part of the frame itself; a frame cut to size such that the frame over which the canvas has been stretched will just fit inside it. Nails or screws are used to secure the two together.

(d) is another frame that goes outside (c). Notice that it’s somewhat thicker wood. The front of it gets cut away to create a ‘shelf” on which a pane of glass (also labeled ‘d’) rests. The thickness can be anything from a couple of mm to a quarter-of-an-inch.

Older paintings tend toward the middle of the range or the larger end of the scale, at least at the lower end of the value scale. More valuable works tend to have thinner glass – not because they need less protection so much as because high-quality glass was thinner and a lot more expensive. In some cases, there have even been multiple panes of glass used, sometimes glued together at the edges (where the frame will hide the evidence).

It’s not desirable to have the glass actually touch the painting at any point.

(e) is the part of the frame that we all get to see. It is attached to the glass-bearing frame (d) by more nails/screws.

And, finally, (f) is a back-board that conceals all this internal work and makes the frame and picture appear to be one solid whole.

It also provides a flat surface onto which various pieces of paperwork can be glued.

Provenience

At it’s simplest, Provenience (often spelt “Provenance’ in English but always pronounced in the French manner) is proof of artist identity. If the Provenience doesn’t stack up, the painting could be real or it could be a forgery.

Frames, and those pieces of paperwork that I mentioned, connect the painting to a paper-trail that can conclusively establish Provenience, can contribute vital clues towards establishing Provenience, or that can offer no more than tantalizing hints.

Ideally, you want to be able to trace the line of ownership from the artist’s hand all the way to the current owners, showing everyone who has had possession of the painting in between. That can include museums, auction houses, public displays, private owners, art dealers, and so on.

In theory, each and every one of those connections is represented in some way by one of those pieces of paper, but it’s often – even usually – not the case.

Instead, you’ll find part of the paper-trail here and part there, and part somewhere else. Sometimes, a code written in pencil is the critical link to an auction catalog, which lists the person putting the piece up for sale and the buyer, which connects to another document or photograph showing the painting in their possession, and where they got it from, which connects to another piece of paper on the frame, and so on.

Being able to show that the purchaser and the piece purchased were in the same place at the same time as the alleged transfer of ownership is always a solid piece of evidence of very little at all – but not being able to prove that can cast doubts as to the authenticity over much stronger evidence.

There’s a lot more to the whole fascinating subject, but that covers the connection between a frame and Provenience, so let’s move on.

Other Differences between older and newer frames

Older frames tend to be bigger and, well “chunkier”. They were sometimes more ornate, richly decorated, and valuable in their own right if they incorporated gems or complex inlays of woods or precious metals.

More modern frames tend a lot more towards elegance and simplicity, and a number of them aim to display as much of a painting as possible, i.e. covering up as little as possible..

The style of a frame can connect an image to the time or place it was framed, which can be another vital clue in Provenience.

Cut-downs

When a painting is re-framed, especially in a more modern or smaller frame, it sometimes happens that the canvas is removed from its frame, trimmed, and then attached to a new and smaller frame.

Frames don’t last forever, and the cause of such re-framing can be wear-and-tear on the frame, but it was usually to remove some flaw in the painting – a tear or a hole or water damage or a burn mark.

Modern paint restoration can work wonders that were not possible in the past; as a result, this practice has largely become unfashionable, but it was more common in times past.

This can greatly complicate Provenience, as you can imagine.

Because paintings can be re-framed at any time, part of the history can be lost, though the best at this specialized craft will usually do their best to salvage what they can, even to the point of attaching parts of the old backing board (still intact) to the new.

Back to the square frame

If I simply drop the mountain in behind the square frame, I get a familiar problem:

But this time I can use a different solution and rotate the frame 90 degrees so that it matches the orientation of the mountains image:

This is better, but still not perfect.

To really get the image to fit the frame without cropping the image,, I need to edit the frame.

Problem 1: Frame is too large

This is a practical example of the first in a series of potential problems.

The solution (given the nominated caveat, keeping the picture intact) are fussy but simple. I’ve captured every single step in the process (as it’s done with my image editor, the free Krita software) in tedious detail. It means that a job that should have taken 2-3 minutes has taken over an hour!

Step 1

Using my rectangular selection tool, I select the top of the frame plus a bit of the sides.



Step 2

Making sure that I have chosen the layer with the frame, I cut (usually CTRL-X) it away.



Step 3

…and then past it into a new layer.



Because the result is indistinguishable from what I had back in step 1, here’s a version where I’ve resized the canvas and moved the pasted section up the screen to show you.

Step 4

If you zoom right in, you’ll find that there’s a shadow element just inside the picture frame that’s varying degrees of transparent.



Since I know from past experience that this is going to be a problem, but is a definite asset to the overall composition – I have to put one in myself if there isn’t one provided – preparing to deal with this is the next step.

Again using the rectangular selection tool, I very carefully select just the “shadow” part of the top section of the frame, cut it, and paste it into a layer just below the layer with the top part of the frame.

Once again, here’s an “exploded” view because otherwise it would be visually indistinguishable:



Step 5

The lower right corner of the screen is where my layers controls and also brush selection live, in this software.

I very carefully select the mountain image layer:

…then go to the extreme top left and move the layer perfectly into place in the top of the frame.



Step 6

When I was capturing the screenshot, above, I noticed an oddness to the shape of the frame – it wasn’t a perfectly straight line, and it should have been. At some point, I must have nudged the top-of-frame layer one pixel to the left.

To confirm that, I went to the other side of the frame (right side) and checked. Sure enough:



When you notice something like this, you have to fix it immediately – you have only so many ‘undo’ steps to use as a last resort, and doing anything else will not only eat into that resource, but will be all the more work that you then have to re-do if you’ve had to use the ‘undo’ option.

‘b’ and ‘c’ show the problem most clearly, but if you observe ‘a’, you can see that the same problem also afflicts the shadow layer created in step 4 (it probably happened, in this case, when I was creating the ‘exploded views’, but it can happen anytime).

Fixing the problem was simply a matter of choosing those layers and moving them – very carefully – one pixel to the right. It might not sound like much, but the results are dramatic:



With that now fixed, I can go back to what I was about to do.

Step 7

I zoom in to the lower right corner. Here everything you can see aside from the workspace (the checkerboard) and the mountain image is still part of the frame because down in this end of the world, I didn’t separate the shadow from the frame.



Making sure that I have the layer containing the lower frame chosen, I carefully move it up until it fits the bottom of the mountains image perfectly.

Hint, may not work with other software: “Shift” constrains the brushes and tools. If I’ve already started moving the mouse upwards with the button depressed, causing the tool to move the layer contents, hitting the “shift” button with my other hand means that only vertical movement is possible.



Step 8

So far, so good! But now we come to the part where the shadow reveals it’s problem to us.



‘d’ shows the issue. Because the shadow is semi-transparent, they compound (and get darker) where they overlap.

‘e’ shows a second problem which doesn’t always happen, but has in this case – the exact opposite, really – the join is showing. So two fixes needed.

‘d’ first. Rectangular selection tool, very carefully choose just the affected area (in this case, vertically- the left-and side doesn’t matter.



Then choose the shadow layer that we made (because it makes this step easy) and just hit the delete key. Overlap removed.



Note that if I had not separated out the shadow layer and the top frame, I would have had two dimensions to worry about. Since this frame is nice and digitally-square, that wasn’t an issue, but it can be a total nightmare – any sort of angle to the selection line and you can end up with pixels that are half shadow and half frame.

Step 9

Which brings me back to ‘e’.

Step 9a: using the ‘straight line’ selection tool, I roughly draw out the shape of the part of the frame that I need to edit, plus a bit above and a bit below. You may notice a subtle marbling effect running at an angle below the affected are – I liked the look of that and wanted to preserve it, so I kept my selection well above it.



Next, I need to head to my brush selection tab and locate and click on the Soft Smudge tool (not to be confused with the very similar icons for textured smudge and water smudge!)



Note that I’ve zoomed in a bit to make this a little clearer for readers.

The label may read “smudge soft” but what it does is plenty hard enough for my tastes. At the top of the screen (but the bottom of the illustration) is where I can select the brush size and opacity.

In this case, I don’t want the defaults, I want a lot more control over the process than that. Change the brush size until it’s about 1/4 – 1/3 the size of the area you want to edit – in this case, that was 13-point-something pixels, then adjust the opacity to about 85-90%.

NB: The opacity tool has different (but generally related) effects depending on which brush you have selected. In this case, it shortens the smear length caused by the smudge tool and leaves the original partially untouched, as though smudging on a different layer in the image.

On the frame layer (very important, regularly check that you’re editing the right layer!), and keeping my mouse-strokes downwards controlled and as parallel to the sides as possible, I blend the bottom edge of the top part of the frame with the lower.



Note that since these layers are still separate from each other, if I stroke upwards it won’t pick up on what’s in the lower layer, it will smear the ‘non-image” creating a void. (Oh, and, for the record, the ‘e’ and yellow box are separate layers above the screen capture).

Step 10

If there’s a problem with the join on one side, there can be a problem on the other, too – or vice-versa. Step 10 is checking and, if necessary, repeating step 9 over on the left.



In this instance, I see no signs of trouble whatsoever, so I flatten the image (merging the layers together) and save the edited file.

More complex textural issues

Of course, it’s not always this easy. In particular, frames where there is a dark-to-light transition down the frame, or across, can require a lot more fussing over, but the general principles remain the same.

And, if worst comes to worst, you can always simply pick another frame.

Here’s the result:

Problem 2: Frame is too small

I was originally going to fully demonstrate all the problems and their step-by-step solutions, but a lot of it would be redundant.

Below is an example – with ‘cure’ in progress – of a frame that is too short (simulated by simply chopping chunks out of the same frame as used above). Just to be different, I’ve used the “oil painting” version.

As you can see,. instead of 2 parts, the solution requires ‘breaking’ the frame into 4 parts, one for each corner. Note that the choice of where to break is always closer to one corner than the other so that you end up with long segments and short ones.

Two of these are in place, two have still to be moved in this image.

In the next, that has been completed, as you can see.

To plug those gaps, there are two basic choices: copy-and-paste a section of frame using the rectangular selector, or mark out a section using that same tool and then stretch the image until it meets it’s opposite corners.

This shows both. I used copy-and-paste on the bottom rail and stretch on the right-hand-side.

Both methods have their advantages and drawbacks. Which one will work best for you – or if something even more complicated is needed – is up to you.

Oh, and it has to be said – don’t work on multiple selections at the same time unless you know very clearly what you’re doing! The above is a visual shorthand, not a recommendation!

You will usually run into one or both of the problems dealt with in the worked example – overlapping transparent areas, and visually-incongruous joins. The solutions are the same, though.

As a general rule of thumb, you are better off working with the longer sides.

Pretty much everything else you need to know was covered in problem 1.

Problem 3: Frame is not thick enough

This is actually the hardest problem of the lot in many respects. Start with the four-cornered solution to the ‘too short problem” but make your selection breakup more carefully., and with shorter arms than you usually would.

It may even be necessary to deliberately make a frame that’s something close to the right size into one that’s too short. To make this visually distinct, I’ve used the “martianized” version of the mountains image.

Once you have your four corners, move them all to the center of the work area. Note that you would normally have them overlapping, but I’ve kept them apart in the screenshot below.

Next you need to choose all four layers at once (or you can do it one at a time). Click on the top one and Shift-click on the bottom one, or ctrl-click on each in succession, or whatever – there are multiple ways to get this done.

CTRL-G creates a quick group containing all four selected layers.

Once that’s done, if you click on the group layer, you can do some things to all the layers within the group.

Like making them bigger.

NB: Unless you detached it into a separate layer previously, you are also going to enlarge any shadows.

Once that’s done, you can either CTRL-ALT-G to Un-group the group, or select individual layers and work with them.

NB2: While in a group, not all Blending Mode changes will work properly, and you can confuse yourself by making a blending mode change to the group no matter what the individual layers are supposed to be doing. ALWAYS ungroup before flattening to the final image, just in case!!

Move the pieces to the corners where they are supposed to be and see where you’re at: You may want to temporarily increase the size of your canvas, too, just to give yourself a bigger work area.

In this case, the resized parts were long enough to link up and overlap on the shorter sides but not on the longer sides.

Expect to face all the usual problems – overlapping transparent areas, obvious incongruities where two parts that weren’t supposed to touch, do, misalignments, etc.

You may be wondering: Why not simply make the image smaller and the frame will be bigger relative to it as a result?

Even if you are saving in a lossless format like PNG, every time you make an image smaller, you lose detail, effectively throwing it away.

I thought I’d close out this post with a closeup demonstration of this.

At the top we have a cropped version of the Martianized landscape, with a box – technically, two boxes, a black one and a white one, slightly offset. Note the detail of the area just above the box.

Below that, to the left, we have a box the same size in front of an image that’s been reduced in size to 40% of what it was, both vertically and horizontally (so 16% of its original size). Compare the amount of detail shown between the two.

Those details that have been lost are gone forever, as the third image demonstrates. It reduced the image to 40% of 40% of 40% in both directions (0.4096% of the original), then expanded it back up to fit in the box. What’s left is a blurry vague mess, barely recognizable as a terrain feature. It could be a tire rut in the mud that has dried out and you would never know it.

Resizing images is a tricky business at the best of times. It can hide mistakes – but only by making them so blurry that you were better off with the mistakes present.

Lossy formats don’t help, either, but there you go.

And one final tip from just about every expert I’ve encountered: always work on a copy, never on the original!

Over the next few weeks, posting will become uncertain, as the deadline for me to move approaches. I still haven’t got a destination.

Those posts that do get published will be a bit different to the usual – shorter than usual, possibly hastily written, maybe not spell-checked or formatted perfectly – you get the drift.

I’ll do my best, but we’re in uncertain waters…