Photoshop: how to fill a stroke with an image

Question

I hope this is the right place to ask "how do I " questions. I've tried googling, but perhaps I'm not hitting on the right search words, or technique words.

I am trying to make a stroke, in this case of a triangle using the polygon tool, with a white "stroke line" and a transparent inner, ie no solid inside colour. I then want to fill the outline of the triangle with an image. I've found a tutorial to do a similar thing with text in illustrator, but the stroke itself seems to be different. If it were anything else I would select the area, and use the stamp tool, but I can't seem to select the area of the line section of the stroke.

Can any one suggest ways to do this? I'm trying to re-create the image below, with different line fillers. Thanks.

Answer 1

• Three layers:
  • BACKGROUND
  • IMAGE
  • TRIANGLE (fill= none, stroke= black)
• Hide the IMAGE and BACKGROUND layers
• From the Channels Panel > press Cmd Mac / Ctrl Win and click in a channel to load the TRIANGLE transparency selection
• Hide the TRIANGLE layer and activate the IMAGE one
• Click on the Mask Icon
• Menu Image > Adjustment > Invert

• Show the BACKGROUND layer

  

Answer 2

• add your image as a separate layer
• press P and draw your triangle shape, or paste from Illustrator as a 'Path'
• press A and select the entire triangle shape, right click and choose 'Create Vector Mask'
• also see: How to use a shape as a vector mask?