| Step 1: You need to choose
which paper you want torn. If you made some textured
cardstock paper from my other tutorial, use one of those!
Got to FILE - OPEN
Then you will get a box that looks like this:
Look for the paper that you want to
tear. You can double click on the one you want and it
will open up in Photoshop Elements. Or you can single click and
hit open. |
| Step 2: You now have your
paper open that you want to tear. Go to your Tool bar
and choose your LASSO TOOL. If your lasso tool is not
showing, right click on the one that is and choose lasso
tool.
 |
| Step 3: This next step may
take some practice until you get the torn area you want.
What you'll do is put your curser where you want to start
and kind of jiggle an area at an angle to where you want to
end. Then go off your page and go around to back to
your start point.
Once you're back to your start
place, let go of your mouse and you'll get "marching ants"
around your paper that will be cut and torn.
 |
| Step 4: We want this piece
of paper, so we need to delete the rest. Go to you
very top Tool Bar and choose SELECT - INVERSE. Your
marching ants will now be around the excess paper we want to
delete.
We need to promote your background
to a layer. Go to your LAYERS Palette, right click on
the blue part and hit LAYER FROM BACKGROUND
Name this TEAR LAYER.
Next hit your DELETE key on you
keyboard. You should now have this:
Right click anywhere on your image
and choose DESELECT. Your marching ants will go away.
 |
| Step 5: Now we need to make
a duplicate layer. RIGHT CLICK in the blue area and
choose DUPLICATE LAYER.
Now rename this new layer PAPER
LAYER, the same way you renamed your paper layer.
|
| Step 6: Highlight your TEAR
LAYER so it's the activated. We now need to change the
color of our PAPER TEAR. I'm changing mine to white, since that is
the usual color paper is when torn. To do this go to
the very top tool bar and choose ENHANCE - ADJUST LIGHTING -
BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST.
You will then get this:
Change both settings to +100 then hit OK.
Now go to the very top tool bar and
choose FILTER - FILTER GALLERY
You will now get this screen:
In the center choose the folder TEXTURE, then CRAQUELURE and
use the settings I have on the right then click OK.
|
| Step 7: I can't see my
changes! That's right. We need to move our PAPER
LAYER over a bit now. Click on you PAPER LAYER so it's
the one highlighted now. Then go to your tool bar and
choose the MOVE TOOL.
Now move your PAPER LAYER a little bit
to the left or down depending on your your tear, until you see your torn area as much as you want
to have it.
 |
| Step 8: We're almost done!
We need enlarge our layers so we can see them better for
this next step. If you look on the bottom left corner
you will see a number and %. Highlight that number and
change it to between 75 to 100%.
Now from your tool bar choose your
SMUDGE TOOL.
If you don't see the SMUDGE TOOL,
right click on the one that's showing and choose the Smudge
Tool. On the very top Tool bar you will see you have
some options:
See where my curser is? Click on that arrow, and
you'll get a drop down of brushes. I chose one called DRY BRUSH, if you
don't have that one, then choose one that's kind of
spattered looking. Then change the SIZE to 100.
You do this by highlighting the size and typing in the
number you want, or click on the arrow next to the size and
move it left for smaller or right for larger.
And change your STRENGTH to 100%. When your done choosing yours and changing the size click
somewhere on your page to get rid of the dialog box.
Highlight your TEAR LAYER and start
at the top or left of your image. Move your mouse in a left to
right or up and down zigzag motion and go all the way down to the end of
your image. Every once in a while stop and start
again, this way if you don't like the way it's looking you
can go to EDIT - UNDO, or CTRL+Z.
This is like an undo button.
Don't worry about going over your
PAPER because your SMUDGE tool will only work on the layer
that is highlighted. Now because we have our layer at
75 to 100% you're going to have to work in increments, because
you're going to have to move your left/right and up/down
arrows to get to the whole image. Here is what mine
now looks like:
 |
| Step 9: Once your done with
your TEAR LAYER, highlight your PAPER LAYER. Go back
up top to your tool bar and change your SIZE setting to 50%
and your STRENGTH to 50%.
Now do the same on your PAPER LAYER
as you did on your Tear Layer, but this time, make smaller
strokes. Here's mine:
 |
| Step 11: Now make sure you
like all that you've done. Change the viewing size to
50 or 13 and see that you like it and didn't miss any spots.
You might even want or need to move your Paper Layer more to
the left or to the right if you don't want to show as much
of the tear.
When you have it the way you want
it, go to your LAYERS and right click on one and choose
MERGE VISIBLE. You will now only have one layer.
Go to FILE - SAVE AS and save it as
a PNG to retain the transparency. When you get this
box
 Choose NONE, this will give you a much
nicer image. |
| I hope you found this tutorial
helpful. You can use this tutorial for all shapes and
sizes of paper. If you're working on a smaller object
like a tag, you'll need to adjust your size settings on the
Smudge Tool. This is a good starting point, you may
want to play with different brushes or textures to see if
you can come up with something you like better :0)
Renee' Strucel |
