Envelopes

You can find the Envelopes function under Edit | Effects | Envelopes…in the Browser, and under Effects | Envelopes… sets what path (folder) is shown when using the Editor’s Save As… window.

Use Envelopes to give your photos stylish frames. These frames can have any of several dozen predefined shapes, such as hearts, bubbles, etc. Zoner Photo Studio can set the envelope’s background color and the sharpness of the transition into the envelope. It can also do a “fading” crop into the envelope.

You can choose from several types of envelopes:

    • Black-and-white and Color Templates —The photo will be “cropped” to fit the envelope (frame) you choose. You can move the envelope around the photo and resize it. The crop receives the color you set under Color. The borders can be made blurry, by increasing the value for Blur.
    • Postage Stamp —Use this to add a postage stamp border that goes around the picture or fits into it. You can set the stamp’s color, background color, and width, and a position and rotation for its shadow.
    • Puzzle —Use this to divide a picture into puzzle pieces with a pen width, pen color, and percentage of missing pieces of your choice.
    • Filmstrip —makes the picture look like a frame in a filmstrip.
    • Notebook paper —makes the picture look like a piece of notebook paper.

Custom Envelopes

You can create your own envelopes in addition to the ones already provided. Envelopes “crop” pictures based on masks that are saved in one of the system folders of Zoner Photo Studio – the Envelopes folder. Black-and-white envelopes are defined using a GIF-format picture with a size of 1024 × 768 pixels and a preview (also in GIF format) with a size of 60 × 45 pixels. Color envelopes are defined using a picture in the PNG format, with alpha channel transparency, and another picture for the preview (also a PNG file), with the same sizes as above.

Give the files that make up your custom envelopes numeric filenames following the existing pattern in the Envelopes folder. Your envelopes will then automatically appear in the program’s list of envelopes. Zoner Draw (a separate program also by Zoner Software) is one very good program for preparing custom envelopes. The Envelopes folder contains a sample Zoner Draw file (envelope.ZMF) to help you prepare custom black-and-white envelopes.

More Information

Turn Your Photos Into Greeting Cards: We’ve Got Downloadable Photo Frames for You.