Roughing up the edge of your paper

10 posts / 0 new

Thu, 03/27/2014 - 13:10

For those that paper scrap as well as digitally scrap, you know when you paper scrap and you distress the edge of a piece of paper like with a fingernail file or distress tool and the edge of the paper gets all rough? Is there a way to do that in Photoshop?

Thu, 03/27/2014 - 13:14

Bre Douglas

The way I do it is to add a layer mask to a grunge/shabby overlay & use a grungy brush with lowered opacity. Then you can change the blending mode to see what looks best. For the effect your talking about I usually like either screen or hard light (on the overlay).

Thu, 03/27/2014 - 18:02

Nancy Archer

Bre - I use a brush to grunge things up. There is also a way to "ink" the edges of a paper that is amazing.
http://www.chelles-creations.com/tutorials/intermediate-tutorials/tutorial-inked-edges/ - very easy and looks really good. There are more complex ways of doing it, but I have been perfectly happy with this one.

Fri, 03/28/2014 - 10:56

Rose Thorn

I'm gathering that rather than a grungy or inked edge, you want some sort of torn/worn effect. Here I found a few tutorials that may help, however they use Photoshop, I don't know if that's what you use.

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/torn-edges/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byk0kaG1haM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxbC5HKnT3o

Fri, 03/28/2014 - 22:33

Shawna Adkerson

Great tips & tutorials ladies. TFS them with us!
@Karry: I am a paper scrapper still and to be honest I know the exact look you're referring to. I can't say in all my time dig scrapping that I've ever seen the exact look that we get from doing that. And unfortunately since I'm not a designer I wouldn't even know how to try to make it happen. There are some things that they've mentioned that get pretty close to the effect, but I think a lot of it not looking exact to me just has to do with the non 3D ability of digital (to date) and also the way our natural eye sees things... I'm not completely sure that it can be done.
Although... with all the CGI stuff nowadays, who knows? Maybe very soon, maybe even one of our very own designers here will be the first to perfect it and create an action, tutorial, or even templates that do it. But maybe someone has already perfected it and I've just not seen it digital... I miss stuff all the time. LoL
Here's an example of a paper layout in real life and a tutorial what tools she used (for anyone wondering):
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