Digitally inking the edges of your digital scrapbooking papers, alphas and embellishments can add a lot of character and depth to your layouts, and it's also a popular technique used not only in scrapbooking today but also in altered art. There are many techniques used to achieve this look digitally. In Photoshop, the most common and probably widely used is brushing on your inked edges with... yup! Brushes! But it is very easy to achieve that inked look using Layer Styles, specifically the Inner Glow and Inner Shadow styles.

For this tutorial, I'm using file folder shapes that I have previously created. I've filled the front with a patterned paper from my Spring Fever Collection and then filled the back with a coordinating solid color. You can use any premade digital embellishment such as a tag, photo mat or even a paper of your choice to do your inking on.

I've filled my folder front and back shapes and have rastersized them. Each is on its own layer. I select my folder front layer and then from the menu bar click Layer> Layer Styles> Inner Glow. From there I chose a glow color (dark brown) and played with the settings until I liked the effect on my folder edge.

My settings are:

• Blend Mode - "Color Burn"
• Opacity - 70%
• Noise - 27%
• Technique - "Softer"
• Source - "Edge"
• Choke - 1%
• Size - 73%
• Contour - "Log"
• Anti Alias - checked
• Range - 45%
• Jitter - 42%.

The most important setting here is probably the contour, using the Log preset gives a bit of an uneven edge so that the corners of your object appear to have a little more inking on them than the straight edges do. You can adjust all the other settings here to your liking. Be brave! Have fun! This is all about playing and expressing yourself in your creation.

We could stop right here and not do anything else and we would have a pretty decent inked edge, but if you want to play some more, try these techniques in addition to the Inner Glow Style that you have already applied.

Choose the Inner Shadow Layer Style and select an ink color that is a few shades lighter than what you used for the Inner Glow Style.

My settings here are:

• Blend Mode - "Darken"
• Opacity - 75%
• Angle - 180
• Global Light - unchecked
• Distance - 14
• Choke - 9
• Size - 49
• Contour - "Linear"
• Noise - 0

This will add just a bit more color and depth to your inked edge. Don't forget to click on the "New Style" button and save your style so you can reuse it on your folder back or at a later time.

And finally you can play with your brushes to further enhance your inked edge. Be sure that you first lock the transparent pixels of the layer you are working with so that you don't get "ink" where you don't want it. I used an erratic kind of scrubbing motion to quickly add smudges to some of the edges of my folder. Less is more with this step, so don't over do.

Here's my finished folder decked out with a few embellishments from my Spring Fever Collection and a photo tucked inside.

Layout by Cheryl Barber

Tutorial written by Cheryl Barber