Use Photoshop to create a picture scroll effect
The page curl effect is a modification effect commonly used in designing images. Many filters can do this, such as PageCurl produced by AVBros., or the famous KPT, etc. But if you have used them, you will find that the effects produced by these filters are too rigid, and more importantly, they are not realistic enough, and traces of artificiality can be seen at a glance. So after only using it once, I gave up. If you are like me and don’t like the fixed modes of filters and want a more flexible way to express your images, this tutorial may give you some inspiration.
Since we will use a lot of path knowledge in this tutorial, I hope you are already familiar with Photoshop's path tools before starting. If you are new to Photoshop, this tutorial can also help you review the usage of paths. 1. Let’s start with the simplest page curl effect. Create a new document with a size of 320 and 20 pixels, a resolution of 72, and a white background. Select the Rectangular Vector Shape Tool and use a new working path to draw a rectangle about the same size as the page, leaving a certain gap between the edges. (Fig.01)
Figure 01
2. Use the direct selection tool to select the working path, select the pen tool in the toolbox, select automatic add/remove in the toolbar at the top of the screen, and add a node to the right and bottom edges of the path. Hold down the ALT key and place the pen on the newly added node. You can see that the pen tool becomes the conversion point tool. Drag the node to change it into a smooth point; press CTRL and the pen tool becomes a direct selection tool. tool, move the new node on the bottom edge upward, and the new node on the right side to the left; then move the node in the lower right corner to the lower left of the center of the page to convert it into a smooth node; drag the smooth point, and then adjust the direction point to adjust the position of the curve segment. As shown in the figure, use the Bezier curve to adjust each curve segment to make it perfectly connected (Figure 02). The finished path shape is the shape of the page curl. Open the path panel and save the working path for easy modification. Path is the key to the page curl effect and must be adjusted carefully.
Figure 02
If you are not used to using shortcut keys, you can also use various corresponding tools to achieve it, but this will be much less efficient.
3. Next we are going to use this path shape. Create a new layer, name it Paper, and choose two colors of the same tone as the foreground/background color. Here, I chose the foreground color RGB (221, 191, 151) and the background color RGB (238, 224, 204). When the path is visible, press CTRL+ENTER to convert the path into a selection. In the new layer, select the linear gradient tool and drag the gradient tool diagonally to make the selection darken from the upper left corner to the lower right corner. shallow. (Fig.03)
Figure 03
4. Create a new layer under the Paper layer and name it Curl. Select the Polygonal Lasso Tool, as shown in Figure 04, and select a selection.
Figure 04
Special attention should be paid to the fact that the edge of the selection must be tangent to the curve, that is, it cannot be more or less. (Fig.05)
Figure 05
Invert the foreground and background colors, and fill the selection with a linear gradient. A miracle happened! Since the Curl layer is located below the Paper layer, all unnecessary parts will be covered. In this way, you have initially completed the curl effect. Or, you may need to darken the background color to increase the contrast on the page. (Fig.06)
Figure 06
It should be noted that if your path was drawn appropriately in the previous step, then in this step, you will easily achieve the effect you need. But if the angle of the curve is not appropriate, the page curling effect will be very stiff. In this case, you will have to go back to the path, readjust the path, and then use the gradient fill method to check the effect. Because sometimes the path looks good, but the shortcomings are only exposed after filling it with color. You may have to do it many times to achieve satisfactory results. In addition, the direction of the gradient is also very important.
5. If you are looking at this step, it proves that you have obtained the path curve you need. Next, we're going to add some polish to the page curl effect to make it more natural. First, add thickness to the paper. The method is very simple. Create a new layer on the Paper layer, name it Stroke, load the Paper selection, set the foreground color to white, select the "Edit > Stroke" command, set the stroke width to 1px, and position it inward. Deselect and erase the excess with the Eraser Tool. Reduce the layer opacity. In this way, a piece of paper with considerable thickness appears. The thickness of the paper depends on the stroke color you use. For example, if you use the foreground color RGB (244, 235, 226) to outline, you will find that the paper at this time is thinner than the paper with white outline (Figure 07).
Figure 07
6. If you feel that the gradient is not ideal for expressing light and shade, you can create a new layer on the Curl layer, name it Highlight, choose a larger soft pen tip, and spray white on the rolled corners of the page to increase the highlight and control the strokes. Make it as soft as possible, lower the Opacity to 51% and change the layer blending mode to Overlay. Within the Curl layer. Select the Burn Tool, set the Range to Midtones, the Exposure to 25%, and burn the edge opposite the highlight. (Fig.08)
Figure 08
7. There are many ways to increase the three-dimensional effect, the most commonly used of which is to add shadows to objects. In our example, the irregular shape of the paper means that we cannot use ordinary methods. We need to outline the shape of the shadow ourselves. Open the Paths panel and use the pen tool to outline the following path (Figure 09). After saving the path, convert it into a selection, create a new layer under the Curl layer, name it Shadow, and fill the selection with black. After deselecting it, apply a Gaussian Blur filter with a radius of 2 pixels. Lower the layer opacity to 47% (image 10).
Figure 09
But such a shadow is too flat and not realistic enough, so we add a layer mask to it, set the foreground color to white and the background color to black, select the linear gradient tool, set the gradient opacity to 53%, and Make a gradient within the mask to cover part of the shadow. (Figure 11)
Figure 11 In this way, a simple page curl effect is completed. (Figure 12)
Figure 12
8. I know that there is no point in making such a blank page. We need to apply this to the image. In this example, we will achieve this effect on a movie poster. If you have successfully completed the previous part, the rest is just a breeze. Open the poster image, resize it to a suitable size, copy it to our image, place it on top of the Paper layer, and temporarily turn off the Stroke layer (Figure 13).
Figure 13
Hold down the ALT key and point the mouse between the poster layer and the Paper layer on the layer panel. A group icon will appear. Group the poster layer and the underlying Paper layer. In this way, the shape of the Paper layer determines the shape of the poster layer, and the poster will naturally have a page curl effect. (Figure 14)
Figure 14
9. But this is not enough, because there are images and text, so we have to take care of the distortion of the images and text in the poster. To achieve the most natural distortion effect, look no further than a displacement filter. You can duplicate the Paper layer and fill the shape with a vertical gradient. Then use a displacement filter to distort the image. If you use the displacement filter skillfully, you will get real-life effects. But this method is more difficult, so we use a simpler method to replace it. Select the poster layer, press CTRL+T, bring up the deformation frame, select the distortion command, and drag the control point in the lower right corner of the deformation frame toward the center of the page. The poster will appear distorted accordingly. Until you feel it is appropriate, determine the deformation (Figure 15). This method, although not very precise, can already meet the general requirements for images.
Figure 15
10. Open the stroke layer. Due to the color image below, the white stroke appears a little thin. You can copy it, then use an eraser with reduced transparency to erase part of it, and merge the copy layer and stroke layer. Why not combine the stroke layer and Paper layer and then group the poster layer? In that case, the white stroke layer won't show up at all. We can also add a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer to the poster layer and set the brightness to -10. Add another layer mask and use a white to black gradient to make a gradient from the upper left corner to the lower right corner of the adjustment layer to cover part of the adjustment effect. This results in a more natural image curling effect. (Figure 16)
Figure 16
11. Finally, we add a background to the image. You can paste a texture or other background image. In this example, I made a marble texture as the background. If you are interested, you can refer to: Create a new document, 320㗴20 pixels in size, resolution 72, white background. Restore the default foreground and background colors, and after rendering with the cloud filter, execute Stylize > Contour filter to create a marble texture (Figure 17).
Figure 17
Duplicate the background layer and change the duplicate layer's blending mode to Multiply. Blur several copy layers to varying degrees and reduce the opacity of the layers. Use Hue > Saturation to adjust the color. Use black and white to render the clouds. Layer the clouds twice more to give greater contrast. Color them using the Hue > Saturation command, keeping them roughly the same as before. Make this layer the background layer. Finally, you can duplicate a texture layer and blur it with a Motion Blur filter to make it appear striped and add noise to the marble. (Figure 18)
Figure 18
The texture of marble depends on two aspects: the random cloud filter effect, and the setting of the contour level. You can start adjusting from this aspect. If you want to get a beautiful texture image, you might as well try more. Pay attention to the coordination of texture color and image. Finally merge all the layers, copy the texture image into the working document, and you're all done. (Figure 19)
