Torn paper edges

12-11-2008 | Last editted on 01-07-2010 28493 views

What happens when you do not properly glue your pieces of paper together and leave them flinging around? Torn paper edges is what you get. When, at that moment, you might not be happy about it, this tutorial will teach you how to apply (and safely undo) torn paper edges to your text and/or logo.

Difficulty: Doable 23 comments | Posted in Text-Effects


Introduction
The torn paper-effect is not that well known. In fact, I've only seen it 2 times around the web in logo's and images. It's a tricky technique at first, but once you know the drill, it's really easy.
For this tutorial, again will I be using my logo, because of the simplicity of it. It will be a perfect example.


The Folds
To start, we're gonna grab your object, in my case my logo and start with a simple fold. As you can see I started at the letter C. On a new layer, I grabbed some Black and placed a triangular shape over it. As you can see below, it looks like a part of the C is missing.

Torn paper edges

Torn paper edges
Now to make it a little easier to look at, I made the curl orange, because white on white doesn't work. We are gonna make it white later, but for now just look at the shape.
I used the Pen-Tool for this to get the perfect shape. As you can see the shape of the orange curl is the same size as the part we cut away from the C. In theory, it's the same part, just curling around.

Torn paper edges
On a layer behind it, grab a very small soft Brush and start brushing some black behind it. If it's too dark, lower the opacity and go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur to make it a little blurry to fit as a shadow.
Since this is white on white, we don't want it to be that dark - the shadow. When you're done, grab the curl-layer and go to CTRL+U and drag the bottom slider to the right to turn it White!

Torn paper edges

Torn paper edges

Torn paper edges
Continue doing this on a few corners. Do not overdo it. And keep in mind that all folds and curls are different. As you play around with it, keep using the same technique, you can literally mess up the entire image like this. When you have enough, stop there!

Torn paper edges
Paper-like
Now because I want to simulate the white part of the logo being paper pasted onto the black paper, I want some glue marks. And to do that, I simply lower the opacity on all those black overlay-layers to 90-95.
That way, it looks like there's still some glue left on the black paper.

Torn paper edges
Now use this fancy paper-texture I got from sxc.hu and place it over your image like so.
CTRL+click the layer of your object, or in this case, the logo and with the selection on, press CTRL+SHIFT+I to invert the selection and press DELETE on the paper-layer.

Torn paper edges

Torn paper edges
I just set the layer-style to MULTIPLY since I'm working with black and white here and this will not change anything but the appearance of the white, which we want. As you can see, it now looks like your paper logo is a little torn and folded to pieces!

Torn paper edges
Conclusion
As I said in the beginning, you can not only use this for logo's, but also for other images like photo's. Try to experiment with larger page curls and maybe polaroid photo's? Or normal photo's! With the same technique, you can create some sheets of paper from a notebook. You can also deviate the texture to get lots of different paper-outcomes!
Enjoy!

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Master

August 19th, 2010

Great work...
i found a site having higher page rank professional tutorials..
see link below
http://www.tutorials99.com

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Photoshop Clipping Path

August 7th, 2010

gr8 job That bit was pretty impressive, thanks for posting.

http://www.photoshopclippingpath.us

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ME

July 12th, 2010

Emmmmmmmmmmm

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MickM

July 1th, 2010

BAM! It's fixed :D

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MickM

July 1th, 2010

I'm sorry guys and girls, I'm trying to get this up ASAP.
The CMS seriously has some issues.

Wish I knew php :p

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papa

June 30th, 2010

???????????

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pom

June 15th, 2010

so, good

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sanit

June 13th, 2010

nice cool

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font

June 6th, 2010

very nice! thx!!

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TEANG

June 5th, 2010

ppppppppp!!!

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taz

June 1th, 2010

where is the torn paper edge tutorial?

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bas

May 25th, 2010

qweqe

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???????

May 21th, 2010

Earth

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Kimc

April 13th, 2010

Nice! It's very easy~ Thanks a lot~

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Anton Hilman

December 2th, 2009

its beautifull so nice... good work dud

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MickM

September 9th, 2009

Thanks all for the lovely comments and Ruben for the feature ;)

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pISyEk

September 1th, 2009

hello there!!!

very nice trick!!

Thanks for da sharing... :-)

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Ruben

January 28th, 2009

Cool tutorials, I've added your website to my linkdirectory http://adobe-tutorials.vindjeviahier.nl

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Venkat Sharma AG

December 14th, 2008

Hey, Mick! This is my first minute on your page and I have to say this! There is something which is very attractive on the page, the colors and the simple style - maybe! Bookmarked you and would be waiting for much to learn from you! Don not disappoint dude!

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lionhurt

November 20th, 2008

it;s gre8

can you put link for paper texture

when i search ... it's 50 page in sxc.hu

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MickM

November 13th, 2008

@ RossH: I didn't. I just used the pen-tool to create my own font for my logo!

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Mara

November 13th, 2008

Awesome! I'm gonna try this, thanks!

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RossH

November 13th, 2008

Hi, what font did u use?


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