:: graffi’s rants & raves :: » Making Tape: actions + Mini Tutorial

Making Tape: actions + Mini Tutorial

Posted 1 year, 4 months ago by Graffi | | 1,763 views | Technorati

There’s so many different ways to make tape using Elements & Photoshop (just Google “Photoshop tutorial tape” for about 1.8 million ways), so I figured I’d toss out a few ways to make a few slightly different kinds.

Of course, there are two actions in the obligatory download that make them for you. (If you download them, I’m particularly partial to the Clear Tape action over the Sticky Tape action - but the Sticky Tape action is still pretty cool: it adds a rough edge and a bit of noise to the tape for a slightly grittier effect). These actions (and the included Layer Style) are Add-O-Matic friendly - they’ll create their own thumbs after you run them the first time (if you add them with the Add-O!)

The attached image uses both actions - the Clear Tape action is in the upper left and lower right corners, and the Sticky Tape action is used in the upper right corner.

It’s pretty simple to make tape, though, if you want to customize your own -

Start with a new document (File>New) and make it about 300 x 300 pixels with a transparent background. You could also just start with a new layer on an existing image.
Use the Polygonal Lasso to draw a tape shape selection.
Fill the selection with white
Change the opacity of the layer to 25% or so.
<Ctrl>+click the layer’s thumbnail in the layers palette to make a selection of it again. Add some noise from Filters>Noise>Add Noise… and add as much or as little noise as you’d like. Be sure to check on Uniform and Monochromatic at the bottom of the Noise dialog.
Add a bit of either Drop Shadow or Outer Glow (Ok, the Outer Glow layer style I used is in the zip file, too) - but don’t add both or it’ll look silly and all your friends will laugh at you.
Finito. Show off to everyone on the web how cool your image looks with tape on it, and mention that Graffi showed you how to do it (unless you used one of those other 1.8 million tutorials - then just tell them that you made it up yourself)

Oh yeah - grab an Add-O-Matic to add the two actions & Layer Style below to Elements 5 with a single drag-n-drop. Then go tell everyone how cool the Add-O is, and that they really can’t live without it. Plus, there’s a lot of free stuff to throw at it here -