TYPE: Text tutorial
LEVEL: Easy
COMPATIBILITY: Photoshop 7 or newer
LEVEL: Easy
COMPATIBILITY: Photoshop 7 or newer
CREATE YOUR OWN CUSTOMIZABLE PAGE CURLS!
The "Page Curls" is a free Photoshop action from PanosFX, that lets you create your own customizable page curls!
You will use a Photoshop action and a set of nine gradients I prepared for you. If you haven't downloaded the files yet, please go to the Page Curls action page.
Decompress the zip file. Drag both files onto Photoshop's work area. Alternatively, you can load the gradients and the action by using the preset manager and the actions panel respectively. This tutorial will guide you through the remaining steps:
1. Open an image.
2. Run the Photoshop action. In a few seconds a curled vector shape appears on the upper left image corner.
3. Drag the lower right transformation handle to change the shape's size to preference:
4. When finished, double click to confirm. In a moment you will be asked to stop the action and select the path selection tool:
5. Press A to select the Path Selection Tool (it is the little black arrow on the toolbox. Be careful not to select the Direct Selection Tool instead!):
6. Now click inside the curled shape and press the "Delete" key once:
7. Resume the action from the step it stopped earlier. The action does some tricks. In a moment you are asked to press stop again:
You will use the path selection tool again. This time click inside the empty (transparent) area on the upper left image corner and press once the “Delete” key on your keyboard:
8. Resume the action from the step it stopped earlier. When the action finishes what you get is a Photoshop image that contains 3 layers: The Add_CurlShadow layer is selected.
We will add our artistic touch to the white curled area to enhance the impression of a curled surface:
9. We will use the gradient fill tool. If you haven't loaded my gradients set use Photoshop's preset manager (Edit > Preset manager) to load it. Press G to select the gradient tool. My set contains 8 gradients. Please select the first one that fades from black to transparent (it's called "CurlShadow"):
Make sure that the Linear Gradient tool is selected:
10. Drag with your mouse from point A to point B to create the shadow. If you don't like the result of your first attempt, press Ctrl-Z (MacOS: Cmd-Z) to undo and try again:
The curl shadow has now been created. Adjust the opacity of this layer to taste.
11. On the Layers panel select the "Curled" layer. Now pick any of the other eight gradients. In our example I picked the black-white-black gradient. I dragged with the mouse from point A to point B, the way depicted below:
This is the result I got:
If you don't like the gradient fill you created, just try the above step again (this time you don't have to undo the previous fill).
With certain images try to change the blending mode of the curl layer (e.g. to "Multiply" or "Overlay") to create a semi-transparent effect.
Panos
