goodly designs for the average tasteful chapThe Paper Cutout Effect
Watch the Video
This tutorial will show you how to create images with a paper texture, like you see here.
Step 1. Create a new photoshop document and select the lasso tool. Set your settings to match mine.
Step 2. Start drawing your scenery. I'll draw a weasel with some backdrop. Hold down the shift key to add to your selection. Close your shapes so ps doesn't close them for you!
Step 3. When you've drawn an object with the lasso, fill it with the paint bucket tool. Each object in your drawing should have its own layer. Here's my drawing completed.
Step 4. Now lets create depth by adding shadows between the objects. Select one of the object's layers and duplicate it.
Then in the layers menu, out of the two identical layers, choose the one at the bottom.
Hit Control U (Apple U on a mac) and turn the layer's lightness down to -100, turning it black. (If the shortcut does not work, go through the menu:enhance, adjust color, adjust hue/saturation).
Now we'll make it a shadow by blurring it. Go through the menus as so, and in the blur menu, choose the amount that looks appropriate.
If the shadow is too strong, turn down the shadow layer's opacity in the layers menu.
Repeat these steps for each layer to achieve this.
Step 5. Our image is ready to be paperized! Paste in one of my paper textures.
Hit control U again and turn the paper layer's saturation down to -100. This removes all the color so the texture doesn't alter the drawing's color.
Now with the paper texture layer selected, switch its layer mode to overlay or soft light.
This is what it should look like.
