Creative Edges

How to add a page curl

I'm always amazed at the creative genius of graphic designers these days. I mean, just look at the things they think up to recreate digitally! Take the Classic Page Curl effect, for instance. Who the hell thought of this thing? It's cool indeed, but who did it first? Food for thought, I suppose.

Speaking of page curl, have you ever wanted to learn how to do it? A kind YML listener asked me the other day and the methods published thus far just didn't seem simple enough. Therefore I set out this afternoon to come up with a new way. Read on!

Make a basic selection

As you all know, to do much of anything in Photoshop you have to make a selection. We'll start out with the easiest tool first.

NOTE: If you are officially At Peace with the Pen Tool, then scroll down and take a peek at the shape of the selection you need to create. Make it so, create a selection out of the path and continue on. (Overachievers!)

Step 1: Press M to select the Rectangular Marquee Tool, and draw a box around the corner you want to curl.

Step 2: Press Command + J (PC: Ctrl + J) to jump the selection up onto its own layer.

Curling the selection

Step 3: Press Command + T (PC: Ctrl + T) to summon Free Transform and click the Warp Tool in the Options bar, as shown below.

Step 4: Click and drag the various handles of the mesh until you get a curl shape, similar to the one below. Press Return when finished.

Adding color

Step 5: Create a selection of the page curl by Command clicking (PC: Ctrl clicking) its layer thumbnail.

Step 6: Press G to select the Gradient Tool and click the Gradient Editor button in the Options bar (both are circled in red below).

Step 7: From the Gradient Editor fly-out menu, choose Metals and click the Append button in the resulting dialog.

Step 8: Choose the gray/white/gray/white/gray swatch (circled below) from the center of the Gradient Editor, then click the first color stop at the bottom left of the editor towards the bottom (also in red).

Change its color by clicking the color well farther below. Pick a medium gray, like as the web (hex) color #999999. Click the next color stop and move it to the left until it lines up with the "s" in the word Smoothness above it (see vertical line in screen shot below). Choose a light gray from the color well (#cccccc). Click the next color stop and move it so that it is beneath the "%" sign and make it medium gray too.

Delete the next color stop by clicking and dragging it *out* of the dialog (feels weird but just do it). Move the final color stop--should be white--all the way to the right. This is what your gradient should look like:

Press OK when finished.

Step 9: Mouse to the document and place the crosshair at the bottom of the page curl selection and drag upward, as shown below.

This is what we have now:

Add dimension

Step 10: Click the tiny cursive "f" at the bottom of the Layers palette and choose Drop Shadow.

Step 11: In the resulting dialog, enter 50% for Opacity, 36 for Angle, 20 for Distance, and 10 for Size then press Return.

Here's what we have now--sweet!

Playing cover up

Because there's some of the original image now showing through, you'll want to cover it up. The simples method (and least destructive) is to paint another color onto a layer below the page curl.

Step 12: Command click (PC: Ctrl click) the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette to create a new layer below the one currently selected. Press B to select the Brush Tool and click the top color chip in the Tools palette and select a color (in our case white). Paint the corner area so that the underlying image does not show through. Use the Eraser tool if you paint too much.

Place whatever you'd like to show beneath the curl--like the Olympus logo--on a new layer above the paint layer, and below the page curl layer. Here's what my Layers palette looks like, with each layer named as to what it is:

Here's the finished product. Tada! Pretty cool, eh?! There's an iTunes gift certificate waiting for the person who can find out who did this first. See you next week!