Making Crumpled Paper

This tutorial will guide through a neat way to make crumpled paper without any outside sources. So let's start.

The Materials

There is one material, a pattern, that I will show you how to make that you will need as a finishing touch for this tutorial.

  1. Open a fresh canvas with the dimensions of 1px wide and 16px tall.
  2. Zoom in a little (Crtl >> +) and select the pencil tool. Make sure the pencil is set to 1px.
  3. Create a new layer and delete the "Background" layer so that your canvas is transparent (checkered).
  4. Using the pencil tool, make one dot at the bottom of the canvas using a light blue color. I used #46a7e5.
  5. Finally, finish the pattern by going to Edit >> Define Pattern. Name the pattern what you want. I named it "Lined Paper".

The Paper

Now, we move onto the actual paper-making.

  1. Create a new canvas at the dimension of 400px by 600px.
  2. Create a new layer and fill this layer with a light grey color so we can see the edge of the paper.
  3. Create another layer. Using the rectangular marquee tool, make a selection that will be the size of the paper you want. Fill this selction with white (#ffffff).
  4. Do not deselect. Switch your fill tool to the gradient tool (click and hold for the menu). Press 'D' to reset your color pallete.
  5. Set your grdient shape to diamond or relfected and the mode to difference.
  6. Now go crazy. Drag the gradient in all different directions as much as you want. Here's my result:
  7. Go to Filter >> Stylize >> Emboss. You can play with the settings a little to make the wrinkles look more or less creased by changing the height and the amount. My settings are Angle: 135, Height: 3, and Amount 150%. The angle can be altered for different light sources, but we'll stick with the default.

Finishing Touches

This doesn't look very realistic currently. Here's a few more alterations to make it look more authentic. Your paper should still be selected.

  1. Use the polygonal lasso tool to subtract from your selection. Press and hold the Alt key to subtract from the selection. You want to take away from the edges so that they are not even, because, after all, paper isn't straight after it's crumpled. Also, you should zoom in because the smaller the detail, the more real it look. This is my result:
  2. Go to Select >> Inverse. Press 'Delete'.
  3. Once again, inverse the selection so that it's back around the paper.
  4. Create a new layer and select the Fill tool.
  5. Change the fill setting from 'Foreground' to 'Pattern'. Then, select the pattern you created from the drop down menu.
  6. Fill the selction with the new pattern.
  7. Change the layer mode to Multiply and the opacity to 20%. You can play with the layer mode and opacity depending on the lightness of the paper, preference, etc.

My final result:

closing Remarks

There are a number of other things you can do with the paper to make it different or more realistic. As you can see, I added a margin line on my final. I also lightened the paper considerably to make it whiter (using Brightness/Contrast under Image>>Adjustments). You can also experiment changing the color of the paper and putting holes on the side. Whatever you feel like. Enjoy.