Digital Paper Tearing? Do you miss the feeling of grabbing one of your sheets of paper and tearing ever so nicely for your pages? In this tutorial I'll show you how to "tear" your paper digitally. It's easy! Let's get started:
Step 1: Lay the paper you want to tear down onto your page. I drag and drop it onto my page or over another paper so I can see the background better and so as to not "tear" the original paper. Always leave the original intact. Step 2: Choose an eraser. Go to your eraser tool and then select a brush from the drop down brush menu. This will do your cutting. I like some of the painterly brushes (the scatter brushes). Then adjust the size of your brush according to how big you want your torn bits to be. Leave the opacity at 100%. This part is open to a LOT of wiggle room. I like to have my brushes somewhere around 100-150 px. You can vary the size of the brush, vary the actual brush, vary the opacity and vary the spacing on your brush. Have fun. Try out various settings until you are happy. That's the beauty of digital- the UNDO button! Step 3: Now go to your paper and begin erasing. I like to zoom in so I can see the detail on my cuts. Then drag your brush down your paper cutting it as you go. you can stop and start, zig-zag in and out depending on how jagged you want your tear to be. Step 4: Creating the white under layer. Create a new layer and place this layer over your background paper but under your torn paper. Kind of like a little sandwich where you see the white as the middle between the paper peices of "bread". Now choose another painterly scatter brush. Set the colour to white. Adjust the size of your brush until you are satisfied. I often use a brush between 125-175 pixels. Go to your new layer and begin brushing your new white under layer. Try to follow the torn section of your paper zig zagging in and out as a real paper tear would go. You can move this layer closer after you are done if you want less white showing. Step 5: I then like to go back to my top paper layer and go to LAYER>MERGE DOWN. This will merge the two layers together to make one layer. Just make sure you have to two layers you want mmerged right over top of each other on your palette. Step 6: Add a drop shadow as shown in the image. You can vary the settings to suit your drop shadow preferences. Step 7: You are done! You can now move your paper around your page and use it as needed. Have fun!! The papers and elements I used for this tutorial are all from my freebie kit called Vacation Holiday.
