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Pin-up Paper Flowers – Photoshop Tutorial

Posted Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

Quite a while ago I found a simple technique in Photoshop for creating your own crumpled paper effect. It involved a few simple gradients, some layer filters and a tweak to the levels! In this tutorial I am going to combine this technique with a simple transform duplication, to create some paper flowers! ‘Bit girly Rob‘ you say…. well yes but Spring is coming and as it is Mothers day, I have been in touch with my feminine side a little more than usual today! So lets get started!

Setting the stage

We will first of all set up a pretty standard document in Photoshop. In this example I have created a 72dpi, 800px x 800px stage. If you were going to set this up to maybe make your own cards then I would advise a higher resolution.

A Basic Background

We will start of by creating a simple gradient effect on our background, but we will be adding our paper effect to the background later in the tutorial, so for now this can stay as a gradient.

Creating Petals

I realise there are some set shapes in Photoshop to allow for the creation of flowers, but following this technique, you will be able to create some fun shapes (not just flowers) and experiment with different abstract backgrounds and all sorts. So, the first step is to create an oval shape using our Ellipse tool.

The colour is a bit irrelevant at this stage, as long as it has a decent enough contrast to the background.

We must now move the pivot point using our transform tool.

While the transform tool is select, grab hold of the center pivot point and drag it down to the base of the shape as shown in the image above. We must then, while the transform is active, rotate the shape. By holding the Cmd, Shift and Alt keys (Windows – Ctrl, Shift and Alt) we are going to rotate the petal. In your example you can do this to whatever degree you choose, but in this example we rotate the petal 30 degrees clockwise.

Press enter to complete the rotation. Now we must step and repeat this process. The easiest way to do this is by simply holding down the same keys as the step above (Cmd, Shift and Alt) and pressing the ‘T‘ key. This will mimic the previous transform but add another 30 degrees onto the rotate. Repeat this process until you have a fully formed flower.

This process can create some great shapes and it would be at this stage I would say to pause the tutorial and have a play around with this technique. Try increasing and decreasing the size on your first rotation and have a look at the great spiral effects you can create!

Adding the Paper Effect

So now we have our shape ready to add a paper effect to. It would be good to note at this stage that I did not create this effect but I cannot for the life of me remember where I saw it first. It is a funky way to create paper crumpled paper though. So set up a new layer and call it ‘Paper‘

Now this technique is pretty simple and only involves three steps. Firstly we must create a gradient on this level. So select your gradient tool and select a Black to White gradient. Make sure the Mode is set to ‘Difference‘ and the opacity is 100%.

Now anywhere across your stage drag a gradient, any angle, just go nuts! Once you have done one gradient, choose a different angle and on the same layer, drag it across again. You will notice the original gradient is still there and the new gradient intersects with it to form a new gradient.

So now we have a couple of gradient intersections, we need some more, not to many, but enough. These intersections will eventually create our creases in our paper. Dont worry about positioning the creases exactly over you flower shape either as we can esily edit this at a later stage. So my final set of gradients looks like this.

Pretty mental huh! Ok now we have our gradient car crash, we must turn it into paper. This involves the final two steps to this process. First of all we select the layer filter ‘Emboss‘

Once you select emboss you will immediately see the creases appear on our layer. My recommended settings for the emboss stage are Angle 135 degrees, Height 2 pixels, Amount 150%

Now for the final stage of the paper effect. We need to nudge the levels to make it less gray. So open up your levels for this layer:

The only thing we will be altering on this example is the mid tones, so on your levels panel, nudge the mid tones up to 4.

You can now see the paper has been formed. All we have to do now is add this paper effect to our flower. Now as mentioned earlier, the paper creases may not be in the best position for you flower, so a little nudging around is called for here until you are happy with the position.

Then select back to the Flower layer and highlight the shape by holding ‘Cmd‘ and clicking the shape on the layer.

Once you have the paper in a position your are happy with, we then need to create a clipping mask for the flower. So Ctrl click or right click on the ‘Paper‘ layer and select ‘Create Clipping Mask‘. We must then duplicate the ‘Paper’ layer to allow for two different layer settings. We need to set the lower level Paper layer to ‘Overlay‘ and the upper level Paper layer to ‘Colour Burn‘. This gives us a nice rich colour to the layers.

As mentioned earlier I also added this paper effect to the background of the image. Using the exact same steps as above. The following examples will show this in place.

Adding the Pin

We are now going to add a little pin onto the centre of the flower to make it seem like it is pinned to the wall.

Firstly draw a circle using either the ‘Ellipse tool‘ or by using the ‘Elliptical Marquee tool‘ in the center of you flower, roughly 30px in diameter. Fill this with any colour. We must then add some layer properties to this circle.

So double click the layer you have just created and add the following drop shadow properties to the pin.

And now a small highlight:

You may also see I have added a gradient to the pin, this can alter for each flower you create so choose any gradient you like for your flower.

Now we just add some tough ups to the pin by creating a small sheen.

Add a new layer and create a new circle above the pin 4-6px smaller in diameter, filling it with white.

Once this circle has been created, use your ‘Eraser tool‘ to fade the highlight out until it creates a subtle sheen.

The Stem

Lastly for your paper flowers we need to create a stem. This is a pretty simple process. Firstly create  new layer Below all layers used to create the flower header.

Using your ‘Pen tool’ or ‘Polygonal Lasso tool‘ Draw a stem coming from underneath the flower head.

Fill this shape with a green gradient as shown above. We then need to add some smaller details to the stem to complete. A small highlight and a drop shadow to add some depth.

Firstly repeat the stem creation process but only highlighting the raised section at the bottom. On a new layer fill this selection with a lighter shade of green.

Now, to create the shadow, duplicate the stem layer and make sure you have the bottom most of the two layers selected, then drag this right a little. Add a colour overly to this layer using the layer properties, this colour should be a slightly darker colour than the background paper colour.

The next step is to add a specific drop shadow under the bottom petal of the flower, to highlight it being further off the paper than the stem. So create a new layer above the stem and draw an ellipse. Fill this with a darker green than used on the stem. Crop this shape to the width of the step and add a ‘multiply‘ effect to the layer

The Final Flower

Hopefully now you should have something that looks like this:

Now all we need to do is duplicate the whole procedure to create some new flowers. You can do this by either creating a new shape from scratch, maybe with different shaped petals, or you can Group up all the layers above and duplicate the Group. You can then go back down your layers to find the masked paper layer, un-mask it and move it around a little to a new spot, then re-mask it to make it seem like there are different creases on this flower.

You can alter the tint of the other flowers easily on the flower layer, and even alter the colour of the pins. Add a paper cut out of some grass to pin on there and you got a lovely spring pin up image!

Give it a go, and it does not just have to be flowers! Any shape or image can be given a paper effect using the techniques above! Enjoy!