Antique Book Tutorial

This tutorial is ©2001 Melisa McCurley. It is unlawful to take this tutorial or my images and display them on your own site. Please do not link to this tutorial without permission. Images you create by following this tutorial are yours to display wherever you please.

Open a new image; 400x400 white (or any color)background. Foreground color black. Add a new layer. Using Preset shapes/rectangle, size 1, stroked, vector & anti-alias selected, draw a large rectangle in the center.

Use vector object selection tool tap rectangle. Click Node edit in the dialog box. Add a new node in the center of the top and bottom lines. Use view grid to get them lined up correctly.

Right click on the top node, and choose node type/symmetric. Right click again and choose node type/cusp. Pull arrow on each side of node up to form a curve. Repeat the last 3 steps on the bottom center node. Click Apply in dialog box.

Holding down the control key, pull the top right corner in some to give the shape some perspective.

Right click on this layer in your layer palette and convert to raster.

Using the magic wand, tolerance 32, click inside book shape to select it. Selections/Save to alpha channel and name it book.

New layer. Set foreground color to #F4EFE4 and background color to white. With shape still selected, choose selection/rectangle and while holding down the ctrl key, select a rectangle from the top left corner of the canvas across to the center of the book and down to the bottom. This will deselect half the book, leaving only half selected. Fill with Linear gradient, foreground to background, angle 90, 0 repeats.

New layer. Select Image/Cutout, fill with interior color unchecked. Shadow color black.
Opacity 70
Blur 40
Vertical 0
Horizontal 12

Select Image/Effects/Noise/Add noise 3%

New layer. Choose Selections/Load from alpha channel, book. Hold down the control key and use the rectangle selection tool to select the right half by making a large rectangle that goes from the top right corner of your window across to the center of the book and down. Fill with Linear gradient, Foreground to Background, angle 270, 0 repeats.

New layer. Choose Cutout, fill with interior color unchecked. Shadow color black. Opacity 70 Blur 40 Vertical 0 Horizontal -12

Image/effects/Noise/add noise 3%.

Use the smudge brush with these settings (below) lightly trace around each edge of the book one time.

Delete the layer with your line drawing on it. It should be layer one, not the background layer.

Turn off visibility to the background layer and Merge/Visible layers. This is what it should look like so far.