Tutorial Times: Wish Listing Paper Effects

We had just finished dinner Monday night when Matt got a message from his best friend, brand spankin' new Company Commanding Officer Beka, that she had just been informed one of her duties included providing an absurd cookie delivery for the battalion holiday parties.  Nearly two hundred circles of crispy home-baked sweetness were expected to grace the offices, courtesy of her company.  This is one of those many moments when being an outnumbered member of the ten to one ratio is not particularly celebrated.  As the only female officer in the building, with the majority of her subordinates being single, Beka was befallen the responsibility of sugary treats galore.  Thus, she enlisted the help of her best friend, who (lucky him) recently managed to catch quite a wonderful woman.  (pauses to pose and flutter eyelashes)

Not too far off from the effects I'll be showing you today, I used this graphic in the newsletter for parents and board members at the school I worked for to communicate educational terms and teaching techniques.

The question of why females, despite commanding over 200 soldiers through the training that will build their career, are still expected to be participating members of the kitchen whenever man decides it pleases them, is not one I choose to answer.  Besides, both of us kind of like cooking, so the only fist-shaking component of this mess is the 36-hour deadline for so many delectable desserts.  But that's the Army for ya.

Since I had no intention of overloading Matt's cabinets with a disproportionate capacity of white powders (oh, relax, I meant flour and the like), I figured we could just pick up a giant box or refrigerated case of pre-made cookies, bake them up, and voila!  Alas, Sam's Club had other plans.  So we had to improvise.  I did a quick google search on le droide (don't you just adore smartphones?), and found a recipe that used bisquick.  I felt brilliant.  We stocked up on literally four necessary ingredients, and rolled home to bake up some british biscuits!

And they taste like biscuits.  Fluffy, slightly salty, somewhat crumbly, with a peanut-butter-chocolate-chip flavor.  Having previously discussed our mothers' (who are both excellent cooks) "failures" (not a complete loss - they made fine hockey pucks) when dealing with bisquick biscuits, my immediate thought was "Well these soldiers are screwed, but I bet if I used some orange zest and cranberries, these would make ridiculously delicious scones!"

Practicing techniques in "grunging" textures and aging photos, I created this graphic as a mock book cover simply for practice.

The lesson behind this slightly-too-long intro, is that you have to try things before you know.  And as long as you are swinging a few different varieties of bats, you can find that different bats work very well to take on different pitches. (I know nothing about baseball. Is it obvious?)

Aiming for a canvas texture, I created this graphic to close off my cousin's second floor during a Pirate-themed Murder Mystery Party.

That's the approach I take to tutorials - both in photography and in graphics. Various techniques are useful for various purposes.  Personally, I like the scrapbooking theme.  I probably use it a little too often, but it means I've done literally dozens of tutorials on paper effects.  Crumply, torn, burned, aged, folded.  You name it, I've done it.

For the same party as the above, this aged and folded map served as decoration for admittance to the "deck" of the ship.

Now, due to my wonderfully generous personality, I'm going to share a few nuggets of knowledge that I've picked up over the years to make a realistic Wish List Letter to Santa, combining a few different techniques.

It's going to take some patience, and a lot of layering.  But with any luck (and your own ingenuity), you'll be able to apply a couple of these techniques to your own projects.  (Also, please note that I'm still using the ancient software CS4, so.  You can probably do more than I can. Sad Face.)

Spiral-Notepad Paper
I'm not entirely certain why tutorials always tell you what size to make things, since I'd imagine most professionals are just picking up techniques to use in their own work, which is probably not going to be a letter to Santa, but in case you're wondering, I started with a new document at 4"x4", and I always start out at 300ppi (pixels per inch), just in case I need to print it.  If I know for sure that this is going to be used for the web and nothing else, I'll start at 72ppi, but keep in mind it's easier to downsize than it is to add pixels that weren't there before.



I filled it with some background color to make the paper stand out since my paper will be white.  Showing you a cork-texture and a pushpin for extra effects will have to be a separate tutorial.  Sorry. Obviously everybody will have their own way of the basic paper-starter, but I would suggest that whatever you do (I rectangle marque it), put it in another layer so you can manipulate the paper without manipulating the background.



Time to destroy it!  Let's put some holes in it!!  Use the elliptical marquee tool, holding down the shift key, to create a perfect circle.  Then use the rectangular marquee tool to connect the circle to the top edge of the paper.  The best way to do this is to hold down shift, aim your cross hairs just barely to the right of the center of the circle, then click and drag it up the edge of the paper, and over just a couple hairs.  It might take a few tries to match the size of circle and rectangle in proportion to your paper, but in the end it should look something like so. (above) Delete the selection, but DO NOT DESELECT IT. Did you deselect it? You rebel. Go get it back. Select>Reselect. No soup for you. Now you need to delete the exact same size of hole in a uniform way all the way across the paper edge. I'll give you a hint. While the deleted hole is still selected, press the Shift key, and jab at the right arrow on your keyboard, counting every jab. When it's an appropriate distance away (each jab is ten pixels), delete and repeat across the top of the edge.



I don't like math, so I didn't crunch out the numbers what kind of proportion I needed. Plus, you're going to destroy this piece of paper. Sooooo why would you need the holes to be perfect? I had an extra piece. So I got rid of it. (Shock ensues)



If it really bothers you, you could just rectangle marquee away the very edge to make your paper proportionate. I think it's a lot easier than redoing the holes fifty times.



Add a drop shadow to your paper layer to give it some depth. Just eyeball it. (Yea I watch Rachel Ray's cooking shows. What of it?) I like to keep mine pretty subtle since, as a general rule, making it look like your paper is ten feet away from the backdrop isn't particularly realistic. I'll have to show you how to do a dynamic shadow sometime as well (this tutorial list is getting pretty long. Who's idea was this?). Then it's time for lines. If you click and hold down your marquee tool, a few options will pop up, including the row selection and the column selection. These are what you'll use for your lines, combo'd with the shift-arrow concept we learned earlier. Click on your document, and the Photoshop wizard will place a horizontal selection 1px tall across the paper. Find a nice blue that you like, get your selection in line for your top blue line, and fill it (opt-delete or alt-delete is a quick way to do it). Then shift-down arrow (don't forget to use those fingers and count!) to a place you like, and repeat.






Some people put the horizontal lines and vertical lines in different layers. Sometimes I do that too, but I didn't this time. It really doesn't matter, the only difference is if you want the purple that results from the red and blue overlapped lines. Either way, deselect your horizontal blues and using the column marquee tool, repeat what you did for the blue with the vertical red lines. I put two there.


Then I bring down the opacity of the lines a couple notches in layer properties (to about 75%), and give it a clipping mask so the lines don't run into the backdrop.



Tearin' It Up - Torn Edges
Now we're gonna create some torn edges. This is another one of those things that everybody has their own techniques. The easiest and most realistic one I've found is the lasso-smudge technique. I use the lasso tool, randomly select pieces of the paper where I want it to look torn, and delete it. There are also a couple ways to prevent complete loss if you screw up. I tend to either duplicate the layer or create a mask to it. (Creating a mask is a great way to delete portions of a layer and making sure you have a net to fall in if you miss your target. If you have the mask selected, and you use the color black, it will remove those portions of the layer, be it filling a selection with black, or painting over the layer in black. Use white, it will return.)



Click Shift and D to make sure your palette is black and white, and click the switch arrow next to your palette to bring the black color to the front. Now use the lasso tool to select an area you want to "tear" and fill it with black (Opt-Delete). Holy crap! It's gone! It's amazing! I'm brilliant!

Anywho... I'll just finish up my deleting...






Almost there. Now find your Smudge tool. It's in the same place as your blur tool, or your Sharpen tool. (Waterdrop, Cone, the finger is what you want. Don't be crude, not that finger.) The best way to get a torn effect is to use an inconsistent brush. I've downloaded a million and a half brush packs over the years, but if you find something in dry media or wet media that looks like this (this one is called "Heavy Smudge Wax Crayon." I found it in Dry Media. Anything chalk-like would work as well.) Stay on the mask of the Paper Layer while you click and drag a couple pixels from the edges of the area you just deleted. From the paper toward the backdrop, people.





I varied up the brush sizes a bit here and there to make the tear less dramatic.

Crumpled/Wrinkled Paper
Here comes the hard part.

Create a new document, roughly the same size as your piece of paper. Select the Gradient tool, and double check that your settings look like this.



Now randomly drag your Gradient tool across the document. Have fun with it. It's gonna look different every time, just like a crumpled piece of paper never looks exactly like another.



I always think they look so neat. Kind of artistic, really. Smiley Face. Go to Filter>Stylize>Emboss. You want the shadows to show up, so I set it like this. How high the pixel number is depends on how deep the shadows look.



Now select your canvas (Cmd-A), copy it (Cmd-C), and paste it on your paper document. Change the Layer Style to Hard Light to make the layer into shadows on your paper.





So there you have it. Crumpled torn paper. Like I said, specialty dynamic shadows, corkboard textures, and I suppose the pencil-effect text will have to be other tutorials. But thanks for tuning in, and keep tutorialing! Little secret: I learned more teaching myself than I ever did in school. So keep playing!