Torn Paper Tutorial

Torn paper tutorial for Photoshop

I'm sure this has been done time and time again, but I figured I'd throw my hat into the ring and show you the way I make torn paper in Photoshop. (I use Photoshop 7, but this is the same for all versions of Photoshop as far as I know.) This will also work if you want to "rip" tags, paper strips, photos or other elements.

I'll be using smaller strips of paper so it'll be faster to go through for the tutorial. You should be able to get the idea. If not, feel free to comment and I'll go back and use a full sheet of "paper."

Bear with me on this one; it's my first tutorial and I'm on my laptop insdead of my desktop so I'm doing everything with a touchpad insdead of my mouse. LOL So the screenshots will be wide screen insdead of standard monitor sizes.

The paper in the tutorial is from the Island Girl freebies from MyDigiStyle.

What you need:

Photoshop
2 pieces of "paper" that coordinate
Your imagination

How to do it:

1. Open your papers and drag the one you want to rip on top of the one you want in the background.

2. Using the lasso tool (make sure you're on the regular lasso tool, not the Polygonal Lasso tool) and make your selection.



3. Jiggle your mouse a little to get those uneven "rips" all the way down the page. Once you're at the bottom, bring the selection all the way around the area that you want to "rip off." Hit the delete key to delete the selection you've just made.



4. Create a new layer under the "ripped" layer and flood fill it with white. Repeat step 3 following the angle of the "rip" on the top layer, but don't be too precice. (Remember, when you make a rip on white core paper, the colored part and the white part don't match perfectly. That's the effect that we're after.)











Now you could stop here, but if you look closely at a ripped piece of white core card stock, the white part has a bit of a texture to it.


5. Go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise and play around with the settings until you're happy with how the noise looks on the white layer.



6. (Optional) If you're happy with how the white looks, that's fine, stop here. If not, open the Hue/Saturation box (Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation) and play with the Lightness slider. I chose to make the white a little darker. The crisp white just seemed a little too stark to me.



7. (Optional) Now you could leave the layer where it is. I feel mine is out a little too far so I used the Move Tool and nudged it towards the top layer some.




Finished Product:



Other Samples:



My Little Ladybug uses papers in the My Little Ladybug 10 piece mini kit from Free Digital Scrapbooking.