Antique Book Tutorial

Duplicate this merged layer 5 or 6 times and turn off visibility to all duplicates. Drag the visible layer down closer to the bottom of the window. Turn on visibility to duplicate 1 and drag it down on top of your merged layer, but just slightly higher. You want the bottom edge of the merged layer to show.

Now use the deformation tool (little square icon usually under the magnifying glass) to pull the left and right sides in slightly so that the sides of your merged layer will show. I've colored the background green and taken a closeup of the bottom right corner so you can see how one page overlaps the other.

Apply a drop shadow with these settings:
Opacity 70
Blur 8
Vertical 1
Horizontal 1

Repeat the dragging, deformation, and drop shadow with all duplicate layers except 1, placing each layer slightly above the one below it and dragging the sides in just enough to see the sides of the layer below.

Now make sure your 1 remaining duplicate layer is the top layer. If you want the book to look relatively new, just do the same things as you did to the other layers. But if you want it to look really old, use your Lasso selection tool, freehand selection, anti-aliased checked, and make a jagged selection on one of the corners and hit delete. Make more jagged selections here and there if you wish, deleting them each time. Now apply your same drop shadow as before. Here is a closeup of the corner after the drop shadow has been applied.

You may want to add some dirt smudges to the page. Color #D0CEBE works nicely. Just paint it on lightly in a couple of places and use the smudge brush to smudge it out.

Once you have all the pages you want, turn off the background layer and merge visible layers.

Using Selection tool/Rectangle/anti-aliased checked, make a rectangle at the bottom point of the book, slightly below the v of the top page. Hit delete.

Now the book has a flat spine.

New layer named cover. Drag it just below merged layer. Load book from alpha channel.

Selections/modify/expand 8. Fill with your choice of color.Drag into position a little below your pages.

Use the rectangle selection again to remove the bottom point of the cover so the spine is flat. If the edges of your cover are jagged, run the smudge tool along them once, same settings as earlier. Apply sculpture or bevel as desired.

Now you can delete the background layer, Merge visible and save your book as a tube or a transparent gif. I don't like to add a shadow underneath the book until I've placed it in my scene. You can add words, pictures, whatever. Make a photo album, an old bible, a family tree book, anything! Decorate the pages any way you like!