Adding Folds & Creases (in Photoshop)

[pyrandon]

Here is a link to a short video tutorial showing one way to add folds & creases to a map (or any image, really) in Photoshop. It is by Corey Barker, "Executive Producer of PlanetPhotoshop.com and an Education and Curriculum Developer for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals."

http://www.planetphotoshop.com/folds-and-creases.html

Thanks to Butch for posting this link on his website where hungry learners like me can find it!

[ravells]

Or you can use the technique...I think it was mentioned by handsomeRob (but not sure)...of just scanning a folded piece of white paper, playing with the curves to bring out the shadows a bit more and using the multiply blend mode. I think that this method gives a much more natural feel to the folds.

[pyrandon]

Another method, similar to HR's that Ravs mentions, is this, from Advanced Photoshop issue 32:

• Scan in a folded piece of paper into photoshop & turn it black & white. (You can also get one from this zip file--it's called "Distress.jpg", but please note this is a copyrighted file (see documentation here))
• In your map document, create a new alpha channel and paste the image into it
• select all the white in that channel (or ctrl-click the thumb in the channels window)
• in the layers window, create a new layer on top and fill the selection with a light/pale yellow or green or brown
• drop the opacity of that fill layer down to 80% or so

I hope this helps. I can vouch for the final results--they're cool, although without any displacement. Attached is how this method looks when applied to one of my maps.

[pyrandon]

A third method of adding wrinkles and such in Photoshop is included in Bert Monroy's "PixelPerfect" video podcast, episode 56, "Pagecurl".

In this great video Monroy shows not only how to use the warp tools but also a displacement map to simulate wrinkles. In his case he creates an example from an open book (which I am definitely going to try soon on one of my maps to make it appear as an opened atlas!), and he also places only a simple page curl, but you can see from my quick test run (attached) that more complicated wrinkles and such are possible.

(Please note that the attached map is one I am "Fixing up" for a future tutorial, and not entirely my own work. Also note that this example was a 15 minute test run, so be gentle on my use of background, shadows, etc., ok?)

Enjoy!

[ravells]

I think the general subject matter of creases, wraps, folds, wrinkes and any other ways of distressing maps would make a great tutorial.

[RobA]

Just don't overdo things! A hand painted, illuminated map would probably have NEVER been folded up and carried around Far more likely to have been rolled.

-Rob A>

[pyrandon]

Oh yeah, it was all fun and games until Rob "Captain Real Life" A shows up with his whitebread attitude and school marm yardstick waving!

Just for that I'm going to go home and fold up and carry around my million dollar, 13th century Anglo-Saxon map just to prove Rob wrong. So there!