Create a nice Moleskine booklet in photoshop
Photoshop can be a great tool to create realistic objects. Illustrator would be prefered, but Photoshop can be so many times faster! In this tutorial we will use Photoshop to create a Moleskine booklet, the tiny version of it (yes, they exist!)
Result Preview:
Step1
Create a new document of 800x600px.
Create a new layer and pick the rounded rectangle tool and set the corner radius to 10px.I made the rectangle 10,23 wide and 16,75 high in the Info Panel. Actually I put my mini moleskine on top of my screen and dragged a rectangle of its size…
The following isn’t needed, but you might want to make the corner radius of the right corners bigger. You can’t really do that in the settings menu of the rectangle tool, you will have to use the direct selection tool (A) and reposition the nobs a little.
When that all is done, duplicate the layer and make the original invisible, just as a backup!
Step2
Now on the rectangle, press ctrl/cmd+T to use Free Transform. Then right click the rectangle and choose Skew. At this point I can’t really help you, just experiment to get the rectangle in a good looking perspective shape. Like so:
Now while holding Alt/Option press the down arrow about 12 times. New layers should have been created, select all those layers with shift or ctrl/cmd and merge them ctrl/cmd+E, but leave the original layer alone!
If you’re quite afraid to mess things up, duplicate both layers again and make them invisible. Then you can merge those two. I recommend using the Pen Tool for the next step, but if you notice you have an easier way (for you), then feel free using that one.
Basically, we need to cut out the piece where you can see the paper, at the bottom. Draw a selection of this with the pen tool, like this:
Right click the area you’ve drawn and click Make Selection… Then erase the inner part and then create a new layer and fill the selection on that one (ctrl/cmd+backspace). Add those layer styles (make sure you get the inner shadow’s noise right!):
Create a new layer and with a soft (0% hardness) and quite small round Brush, draw a white line as a highlight on the corner. Reduce the opacity until it looks realistic. It depends on how “extreme” your perspective is.
Step3
Select the layer where the part of paper is filled.Add these layer styles to it:
Now grab the line tool and set its weight to 1px, draw lines on the paper with this color: #9b947d. Pick a big soft eraser to erase the edges at the right a little, so it doesn’t stop too harsh.
Then ctrl/cmd+click the Thumbnail of the paper layer so it becomes a selection.Now create a new layer on top of the paper and its lines and draw a soft black dot at the corner of the paper, reduce the opacity to 50%.
Step4
Duplicate the black cover layer and move the duplicate all the way to the top in the layers palette. Now go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise, Make sure you check Monochromatic, set the distribution to Uniform and the radius to 3px. Then apply. Reduce the opacity of the layer to 88%
Step5
We now have a neat looking booklet already, but it must look more realistic.
Take a huge white and soft brush (about 950px) and draw 1 dot right on top of the top right corner of the booklet. Reduce the opacity to 33%
Create a new layer beneath all the other layers (only in front of the background layer) and pick a black soft brush with about 30-40px of size. Draw a shadow in an L-shape below the Left side and the bottom side. Reduce the opacity to 90%.
Then create another layer and enlarge the brush to about 60-70px and draw a shadow again, but make sure the center of your brush never comes out of the booklet area. So it shouldn’t hit the white. This is so it would remain a really soft black. Now reduce the opacity to 75%
Step6
We now have the full moleskine drawn, you can now feel finished or add some personal touches…or follow one more step to add some letterpressed text on the booklet.
Pick the text tool and type your text in Helvetica/Arial 22pt size and set to Bold.Add these layer styles
Use the skew tool again to position it correctly. For your own ease, move the text around so you can use the booklet its sides as guides.
Ctrl/cmd+Click the thumbnail of the layer so it becomes a selection and create a new layer, pick the black brush again and paint the text black a little at the left half of the text. Then reduce the layer’s opacity to 65%, also reduce the text layer’s opacity to 65%
Final Result:
This is a great tutorial, but step 2-4 were a bit confusing.
1. I couldn’t understand the need to create 12 layers and,
2.Regarding,“Basically, we need to cut out the piece where you can see the paper, at the bottom. Draw a selection of this with the pen tool, like this:”…how does one create that curvature of the spine of the book going around the paper?,
finally,
3. Where did, “draw a white line as a highlight on the corner. Reduce the opacity until it looks realistic. It depends on how “extreme” your perspective is.” occurs?
Overall this looks like a great tutorial, lol, but for a beginner trying this out (with lots of trial and error), maybe screen shots for steps 2-4 for better clarification?
It was hard to replicate at that point due to getting lost in the directions and not sure what was needed to be duplicated and where to select.
1. When you create layers with the keys I described, they will duplicate and move down 1 pixel every time. So basically you’re extending the shape 12 px downwards.
2. It is hard for many people to work with the pen tool and it’s also quite hard to explain what the reader should literally do. You might need some practice with the pen tool, but I can give you some quick tips already.
When you hold Alt/Option and click a “nob” / anchor point it will remove the curve it would automatically generate when you added the next anchor point. So when you need the straight lines at the top and bottom, you should use Alt+click on the nob before you get to draw the line.
I know it sounds really hard, but I’ve got a nice in depth video on the pen tool for you here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9vUqFSH1lc
3. The highlight is the one on the spine of the booklet. I mean the part where all the sheets are connected to the cover. It’s the really soft lightning on it. You can see it on the screenshot right below the text you quoted.
I’m really sorry to confuse you with the instructions, it’s just a quite intermidate tutorial to follow but also to write. That’s mainly because I can’t expect everyone to get an identical result, so people need to adjust instructions to their own project.
I might make a video tutorial in case of such hard tutorials, next time.
Best of luck, SF