Torn Paper Brushes

Torn Paper Brushes

Two weeks ago, I gave you some tips on digitally tearing paper. I mentioned “tear” brushes and said I’d try to give you some tips on those.

Well, today’s the day to take care of that…

Torn papers are a fun addition to any layout. I love including them on my pages, but I’ll admit…I typically use templates when making them. On rare occasion I have created my own from scratch as demonstrated in that prior post.

I’ve known for a long time (relatively speaking) that there are brushes to help with creating torn edges. Another confession…I’d never tried using them. So, I stepped out of my comfort zone & decided to do a little research and learn about creating torn paper with them for this “tutorial”. Just like everything else in graphic design, there’s not much limit to what we can do today.

Tearing With Brushes

Before I get started, please remember that I use Photoshop Elements (PSE) so everything that follows is done using that software.

First and foremost, there are lots of free brushes available. One of my favorite places to look for brushes is Brusheezy. And I did find a nice set of “tear” brushes – “Torn Paper Brushes” by Tricorn Design.

Brusheezy Torn Paper Brushes

There are other sites offering free Photoshop brushes…but Brusheezy is kind of my “go to” spot to look & they didn’t disappoint. But you can search the internet for “free torn paper brushes Photoshop”.

Load The Brushes

Once I downloaded (& unzipped) my new brushes, the first thing I needed to do was “load” them. In case you’re not sure how to do that…it’s pretty easy. I click on the brush tool in the tools panel. Then, I click on the down arrow beside the brush to open the Brush Preset Picker box. I then click on the “three little dots” on the top, right corner of the brush panel:

Brush Preset Picker

This opens an “options” drop down from which I select Load Brushes. From there I just navigate to the folder containing my brushes and select the appropriate ABR file. Now my new brushes are loaded:

Brushes Loaded

Tearing The Paper

Okay, now I can get down to tearing. Today I’m going to be using some papers from “PearFect Fall” by ET Designs. I start with the background over which the tear will be layered. I’m using this wood paper:

PearFect Fall Wood Paper

Next, I’ll bring in the piece of paper that I’d like to “tear” and place it over the wood paper:

PearFect Fall Pear Paper

You know how cautious I always am when using “destructive” techniques on paper. I’m going to duplicate this pear paper and hide the original just in case 😉.

With the duplicate pretty pear paper layer active, I click the “Add layer mask” icon at the top of the layers panel to add a layer mask to this paper layer. Next, I click on the brush tool and select one of the Tricorn Torn Paper Brushes. I used 09.psd (2068).

Now I double-click on the layer mask for the Pear Paper Layer and ensure that my color chips are set to the default (black foreground white background). Then I begin tapping the brush on the mask to mask out part of the pear paper to create the torn edge. I overlap the brush regularly so I don’t end up with a repeating pattern on the torn edge. Here’s a look at my brush “mask”:

Brush Tear

Unless I want to have only this little strip of wood showing, I need to get rid of the remaining pear paper below the tear. I can do this one of two ways.

One, I could just change my brush to a basic square or round brush and mask away the extraneous paper.

But since I’m fairly certain I won’t be making any changes to the actual tear I could also just simplify the pear paper layer and draw a selection box around the remaining paper and press Delete. Either way, this is the result:

Brush Tear - Extraneous Paper Deleted

Now I add a new layer under the pear paper and fill it with white. This layer will become the “white fill” part of the tear. I name this layer “Fill”.

Brush Tear - White Fill Layer

With the white (Fill) layer active I hold down the Alt key and click the layer mask icon at the top of the layer panel. This will add a layer mask that is filled with black & completely hides the white layer.

Brush Tear - Fill Layer "Hidden"

Don’t worry, I’ll explain why I’m doing this in a minute. Ensuring that the white fill layer is still active, I double-click the layer mask & select a Torn Paper Brush again. I choose to use the same brush as what I used for the original tear.

I could use a different one or even change it multiple times while creating the white edge. It doesn’t really matter. The white paper that shows along the torn edge is not meant to “match” the tear on the patterned paper. So don’t stress about this. I’m going to do some brush work again, and just create that white edge along the tear.

Before brushing, I have to reverse the color chips so that the foreground color is white. Next, ensuring that the mask for the Fill layer is active, I just start tapping the brush over the background (wood) layer to reveal the white edge being careful to just reveal a very thin strip of white along the tear.

I do want it to vary in thickness so it looks more natural. While masking, I want most of my brush to show up “above” the pear paper so I’m only revealing a narrow white edge beyond the torn edge on the pear paper. I want to ensure the edge isn’t even or perfect. No stress…I just start tapping overlapping/re-sizing and tapping that brush again until I’m satisfied.

If some of the edge needs to be reduced or cleaned up a bit, I just switch the foreground color to black, click on the layer mask on the background (wood) layer and tap the brush again to remove some of the white edge. I switched between black (to hide) and white (to show) over and over until I was happy with how the edge looked. And here is my white edge:

Brush Tear - White Tear Fill

Little pointer here…it helps to zoom in a bit during this step to get a better view while brushing.

At this point if I’m positive I won’t want to make any more changes to the torn papers, I could just simplify the pear paper layer. That makes the changes I made on the mask permanent on the layer. For right now, I’d rather keep the layer mask live so that it will be easy to make changes if I feel the need.

Zhuzhing Up The Tear

The file looks pretty good as it is, but we all know that torn paper isn’t perfectly “flat” looking. So, just as I did in the prior post on tearing, I applied a texture to my white torn edge by clipping a piece of textured white paper to this Fill layer:

Brush Tear Texturized

As in my prior post about paper tears, I am again using a piece of textured paper from “Paper Pack #4” by Paula Kesselring. But if you don’t have a nice texture paper (or don’t feel like looking for it) refer back to that prior “tearing post” for tips on using the Paint Bucket Tool & a Photoshop Pattern.

You’ll notice that the paper I used makes the white edge look perhaps greyer than it should. DON’T PANIC. It takes a bit of gray to make the texture show up. It looks okay like it is, but I think perhaps I’ll brighten it up just a little. I just change the opacity of the textured paper until it brightens up just enough. I actually used a 70% opacity level

Another option would be to duplicate the textured paper layer (clip it to the Fill layer) and play with changing the blend mode.  The Overlay or Soft Light modes seemed to give the best result. I opted Soft Light. And here is the result:

Brush Tear Texturized & Brightened

Either with the clipped paper or the Paint Bucket texture, everything still looks too flat so I need to add some more depth with drop shadow and/or bevel styles. Today I’m just going to do some quick shadows. If you want more detail about shadowing and/or beveling please refer back to my prior tearing post.

With the “textured” Fill layer active I select Layer->Layer Styles (from the top menu). This opens the Style Settings Dialog box.

Style Settings

If the color chip isn’t set to black, I change it to black. Then I set Lighting Angle to 120 degrees, Size to 10, Distance to 9 and Opacity to 35% click ok. How dark & big you set the shadow will depend on how dark your background paper is. With the wood that I’m using I went with a “deeper” shadow than what I may have used on a lighter background.

Now the top (pear paper) layer could use a boost. I copy the layer style from the Tear Fill layer to the Tear layer. The settings are a bit too dark/steep for this top layer. Not to worry, this is just going to give me a starting point. I will make adjustments to the settings.

A lot of tutorials will tell you not to shadow the “original” paper layer. I am typically happier with the tiniest bit of a shadow on the top paper. For this I set the Drop Shadow settings as follows: Size to 4, Distance to 3 and Opacity to 25%.

Brush Tear Final

Again, you can play around with these settings if you want to experiment with different looks.

I can’t tell you how happy I am that I decided to step outside my comfort zone & embrace the role of being a “beginner”. I love that I can continue to grow and improve. Using brushes may be my new “go to” for creating torn paper edges.

Some Extra Tips For Using Torn Paper Brushes

The key to getting a nice tear is to really fine-tune your “brushing” skills. Experiment with re-sizing and rotating your brush to get unique random tears. If you’re not sure how to rotate your brush…watch for next week’s post. I’ll talk more about it then.

Don’t stop at tearing just one edge of your paper and create more than one torn layer for a given layout

And if you’re feeling extra brave put the shadows on their own layers to customize them and bump up the look of your shadow. Just use the Smudge or Warp tool to make it look like the paper is lifting just a bit more here and there. Sometimes just the tiniest warp of the shadows can make it look so much more natural. I would encourage you to experiment with “warping” the shadows (at least on the fill layer).

If you don’t know how to put your shadows on a separate layer, please check out this great tutorial by Cheryl Ashcraft from Fiddle-Dee-Dee Designs.

And as I always say, the more you play around using brushes to make these tears…the better they’re going to be!  Have fun!!!

Please remember, if you have any questions or need a bit of help, please don’t hesitate to “Message Me” for some assistance.

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