Tutorial: Working with Old Paper

I have seen a lot of designs that are made to look like they are printed on old wrinkled paper. But the problem is that typically they do not match the paper. It looks like perfect clean text and art on old beat up paper. So here is a simple way to make you art match the paper.

Step One: Find your paper.
iStock is the easiest place to find a high volume of art for this. But you can always to the DIY method and scan it in yourself. Once you have the art, bring it into Photoshop.

Step Two: Add you art.
Once you have your paper as a background you can add in your artwork. Lay it out how you want the final to be.

Step Three: Get you multiply on.
Use the blending mode “multiply” to make the art look like it has been printed on the paper. Multiply takes out all the white from the image or text.

Step Four: Copy a layer.
This part is pretty easy, here it goes. Copy the paper layer, and move to the top. That’s it.

Step Five: Let’s all select.
This step is the key to making your art look real. Zoom in on your art, and find the darkest place that represent the folds or creases in the paper. Go to your top menu, click on Select, then choose Color Range. With the eye dropper tool select your darkest place on the paper. You can adjust the Fuzziness to get the desired effect.

Here is how it should look when you are done.

Step Six: Text work.
Your text will not match the art so you will need to work on that now. First you need to make sure you rasterize your type, or merge your type groups. Once you do that add a Gaussian Blur to the type to match the blur of the paper and other art. Make sure you do not overdue it though, it can look too blurry.

Step Seven: Nothing, you are done.
That’s it, you are done. One thing you might want to do is save your file.

I hope this helps you. Taking the time in your art will make all the difference. It is the details that can make something that is good become great.

Filed under Tutorials, design |