|
|
When I started my design career, I spent quite a bit of money on filters. One, in particular, allowed me to crumple paper. Four years later, I’ve really gotten to know my Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, and found that much of the tools that I had paid for in the past, I could do on my own. (And more realistically too!)
Today’s tutorial is easy. But it may be one that makes you go hmmmm, good idea! Why didn’t I think of that before.
PART 1 – CREASE, FOLD, CRUMBLE
Step 1 crumple a piece of white paper and scan it. I like to lower the brightness to show more crumpled detail. (Figure 1).
Step 2 – Place your scanned white paper on top of the paper or element you wish to crumple. Enlarge, reduce or cut the white paper to be the exact size of the item you wish to crumple. (Figure 3 and 4).
Tip: CTRL-CLICK on the layer of your element to get marching ants around that elements. Then highlight/select the crumpled top paper layer. Press [CTRL] [J] which will create a new layer with a copy of the crumpled overlay cut to size. This does not cut or damage the original crumpled layer which you can turn off or delete.
Step3 – When you place the crumpled paper on top of the element or other paper, you completely cover the other item. There are 3 things I like to experiment with in order to make the crumpled paper disappear, while leaving the crease marks on the paper below. Try adjusting:
1. Blend mode of the layer (drop down menu)
2. Opacity of the layer
3. Brightness/contrast (ENHANCE – ADJUST LIGHTING – BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST) of the layer
See Figure 4.
Here is your final result. E-Z P-Z!
I took that very same scanned crumpled paper, following the steps above, and placed it on written paper. Same paper, looks great on my background paper and my written element.
Step 4 – Merge the crumpled/folded overlay onto the paper or element. To do this, look at Figure 7. Select the top layer to be merged, and mouse-click in the little box to give a “chain” LINK icon for any and all layers you want to merge together. Once you have all of your layers LINKED, press [CTRL] [E] to merge the layers into one layer.
We could stop here. The paper has basically straight edges. It looks very good; but let’s try to add a special detail. By applying a distortion (perspective), we can make the paper look more raised or lowered.
PART 2 – ADD YOUR PERSPECTIVE
Step 1 - In Figure 8 below, I’ve taken the polygonal lasso too and used it to grab select a corner. I followed the crease line (tip: crease line does not have to be a straight line, so you could follow a crooked line). Following the crease line, and being sure to include the corner that I want to distort, I have used the polygonal lasso to lasso a triangular section.
Step 2 – As it is now, the paper has four straight sides. If I could only tip the bottom edge slightly inward, we would get the illusion that the bottom corner is bent downwards and slightly lifted.
I guess you could erase part of the corner on an angle to achieve the lifted shape, but with patterns, with real paper, is that realistic? We want to maintain the integrity of the paper and pattern. So let’s transform it!
With the corner still selected by the polygonal lasso, press [CTRL] [T] to bring up the transform handles as shown in figure 9.
Step 3 - As you know, drag any one of the transform handles, will enlarge or shrink all of your selection. But in our case, we want to pull the BOTTOM CORNER ONLY to the left. All you need to do, is with keep you finger on the [CTRL] key while dragging the bottom right CORNER HANDLE to the left and slightly upwards! Try it! Wasn’t that fun?
Until you get some practice, you may notice that the whole corner separated from the paper. No problem. While you still have the corner selected by your lasso tool, you can move that corner right back to the paper’s edge.
Press [CTRL] [D] when you are satisfied with your fold to remove the marching ants. And voila we have folds with perspective. See Figure 10 below.
Try it on other folds too, even if the folds run across the middle of the paper.
In figure 10 above, there really are more creases that you can follow to create additional perspective distortions. Just follow the creases, straight or otherwise, with your polygonal lasso, press [CTRL] [T] to get the transform corners, keep your finger on the [CTRL] key, grab a transformation block and adjust the perspective! It’s fun!
Modify perspective in conjunction with a fold. Notice and the bottom right corner looks folded downwards, vs. the top right corner looks folded upwards?
Challenge Ideas:
1. Try folding the paper in quarters, or as a fan, etc.
2. Build your collection of crumpled and folded overlays to have on hand. If you would like to purchase my pre-made fold brushes and overlays to add to your collection, click here to find them at SBB.
3. Change the brightness and contrast, and blending modes for different effects.
4. Resize your scan that your height and length of your document is no larger than 2500 pixels each; then select EDIT-DEFINE BRUSH. This will create a brush for you to make and remove the white space. I would then suggest, use the brush and stamp it on a blank layer. Save the layer as a .png and delete the brush. This gives you a nice overlay without the white space.
What spin can you add to this technique? What tips would you like to add?
Modify perspective for dimensional effect!
You can download a PDF Version of this tutorial by CLICKING HERE
© Copyright by Scrapbook-Bytes.com
Top of Page
|
|
|
|
