Design Magazine

Hey guys, eye candy tutorial!
In this short Photoshop tutorial we’ll be creating our own cool scotch tape, so you can stick things to stuff… and the like These kinds of graphics are also particularly useful for grunge-themed website designs.

1. Document

Start by making a new document in Photoshop, something like 800 x 600 pixels or a size that fits your screen resolution well.
Next, we want to create a basic background. Start by making a relatively dark gradient in the Background layer, then you might want to copy something onto the canvas that you can use the tape on.

2. Basic Shape

Now to make the shape of our tape. Start by making a rectangular selection with the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Now make a new layer (layer > new > layer) then fill your selection with a light yellow-ish color.

The above shape is filled with #f4dc8c.
Next, find and get out the Polygonal Lasso Tool then make a triangular shape on the right side of your tape shape, like mine shown here:

OK, after making your selection similar to mine, press delete on your keyboard to remove the selected area. Hold shift and press the up key once, press delete again and repeat until you’ve gone all the way up your tape.

Looking good. Now duplicate this layer, flip it horizontally (edit > transform > flip horizontal) then move it to the left until the edges are properly visible.

You may also want to flip your duplicate layer vertically, so it looks a bit different from the other side. Rather than doing this you could just use the selection process again, but that will give too much of a different result; it’s best make it seem as uniform as possible.

Merge your layers together.

3. Shape Detail (Texture)

Now we want to add a slight texture effect to our tape.
Lock the tape layer’s transparent pixels by clicking the icon in the layer’s palette, then add a little grunge brushing inside of the tape pixels.
You can accomplish all of this by following these few simple steps:

1. Start by locking the layer’s transparent pixels.
2. Get out the brush tool and set either black or white as your foreground.
3. Using a simple grunge brush, brush inside of the layer’s pixels with one brush at a time.
4. After clicking once, go to edit > fade brush and fade the brushing to 10-15%.
5. Repeat this once or twice more with a few different colors, continue fading the brushing so it’s hardly noticeable.

This was just to give the tape a little bit of texture, I’m not sure if it’s exactly realistic, but at least it looks cool!

If you’re at a loss for grunge brushes, be sure to check out these few hot spots:

• Brusheezy
• DeviantART
• Misprinted Type

The brushing wasn’t necessary, so if you weren’t able to accomplish this step completely don’t worry about it!

4. Finalizing

Got something to use the tape on?
Stick it on the canvas and position it accordingly. After this, rotate the tape and size it down if necessary, like I’ve done here:

You might want to make two or more variations of the tape when originally designing it, so you can use each one a couple of times so it doesn’t look so repetitive, got it?
I finished off with my tape by lowering the fill very slightly (around 90-95%) and also by adding a slight drop shadow.

Done!

Well, we’re done for this tutorial, I told you it was short! I hope you all enjoyed it.
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