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| Presented to you here is a tutorial to help you create realistic torn edges. This effect looks great when applied to photos. | ||
| You
will need to use:
- layers, - the "flood fill" tool, - an image which will be used as a mask and - the "drop shadow" function. |
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| Step
1:
First, click on the image below and save it. This will provide the mask to create the torn effect. Open the image and leave it alone for now. You will not actually be touching the image at all in this tutorial. |
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| Step
2:
Open you image and create a new layer by clicking "layers - new". Here is the image I will be using. |
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| Step
3:
In the new layer, use the "flood fill" tool set with the colour you want for your background. I have used black in my example. Your image should be completely covered by that one colour. |
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| Step
4:
Click "masks - new - from image". Enter these options: - Source Window: tornedge - Create mask from: source luminance - Invert mask data: checked After you've click OK, your image should now look like this. As you would have noticed, the dimensions of the mask have adjusted to your image. This is the advantage to using masks so they can basically be applied to any image. |
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| Step
5:
You may want to add a white border around the image to highlight the torn edge look. To do this, click "masks - save to alpha channel". Don't worry to much with the names, just select the default name by clicking OK. Now click "selections - load from alpha channel" and select the default name that was just given (Selection #0). Invert the selection by selecting "selections - invert" so that only your torn image will be selected. Click "selections - contract" and enter 2 pixels into the field. This will contract your selected area by 2 pixels so that there will not be a border around your image when we add the drop shadow. |
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| Step
6:
Now you are ready to add a white drop shadow to your image. Click "image - effects - drop shadow" and enter the following options: - Colour: white - Opacity: 100 - Blur: 5 - Vertical Offset: 3 - Horizontal Offset: 3 This will add a white drop shadow to the lower right of your image. Now repeat this step with: - Vertical Offset: -3 - Horizontal Offset: -3 This will add another drop shadow to the upper left of your image. Here is the final image. |
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| If you are using a white background, you can still add a white drop shadow for the torn edge effect. However, you will need to add a black drop shadow before you add the white one. Use a blur factor of about 10 and change the offset values to your own preferences. |
