Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Faking a page-fold with photoshop


Do any of you happen to know of some recommended techniques in creating the effect/look that makes a page appear as though it had been folded before?


Something like this: enter image description here



Answer



It's mostly just playing with gradients until it looks right which can be tricky. Some things to pay attention for...




  • Make the sure the "print" material is bent too


    Though I don't often see it done properly, one of the things that can make bent/crumpled effects look very nice is to apply subtle transformations to the "print" on the page. For example, the image you posted has a nice fold effects with the gradient overlays, but the lines & text on it are still perfectly straight. In particular, if you look at the horizontal rule beneath the heading - the center of it has a very noticeable bend in the background but the black line is unfazed. My eyes find this very distracting.





  • Make sure your shadows look natural


    Making sure all the gradients reproduce a "natural" folding pattern also helps the effect. Pick a light-source direction and think about which direction each fold is going, and make sure the gradients are appropriate to the shadowing that would be produced. It may be easiest to fold up a regular piece of paper on your desk and study the shading in the real world.




  • Don't make the edges too sharp


    No bent piece of paper in the real world will have razor-sharp edges. Having pixel-perfect edges sometimes looks just a bit too crisp.





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