Now that everyone has digital cameras you hardly ever see slides or Polaroids except during the family holidays. You can easily recreate this look with a few simple steps to mimic the look of a scrapbook or create fun travel brochures.




1. Open your photo in Photoshop. I gave mine some extra canvas space because the next step will hide a good portion of the image. (Go to Image > Canvas Size to expand yours if needed)

2. With the shape tool selected go to the Options Bar (just below the Menu Bar) and  make sure you have the third icon from the left selected. This will create a marquee instead of a shape layer. Then set the radius to give a rounded corner effect. (Mine is set at .25 for a 200ppi image - this may be higher or lower based on your resolution) Create a new layer and draw the rectangular slide shape. Switch to the rectangular marquee tool and draw another rectangle within the rounded corner shape and press delete (fill shape with white). This new layer should be above your image and you should now be viewing the image through the slide.

POLAROID TIP: Use square corners instead of rounded corners and edit the proportions to achieve a Polaroid effect.

3. With the slide layer selected go into the layer styles and add a drop shadow at minimum and continue with the gradient overlay for light effects, bevel and emboss for an edge effect and satin to give it additional color.

TIP: Retain a master slide/Polaroid document then drag and drop the slide or Polaroid layer into other documents. Or bring your photos into the master as different layers and show/hide the images you want and save a copy.