Pretty Plaids (Photoshop)

Most digital scrapbookers, at some point, want to try their hand at making their own paper. This can be a fun venture, and there are probably hundreds of different ways to accomplish it.

If you’ve never made plaid, I suggest you give it a try. I think you’ll be surprised at how easy it is! Plus, this is one of those tutorials that will give you different results every time you try it. So if it doesn’t work well for you the first time, try it again. And if it does work well for you the first time, I’ll almost bet you’ll try it again because you had so much fun!

Step 1) Find the right photo

First, let me say, the photo has nothing to do with the plaid paper other than it will give us the colors (and stripes) for the plaid. So don’t struggle too much over which photo to choose.  After you do this once or twice, you will have a better idea of what kind of photos work best with this method. I typically try to find photos that have a lot of similar colors in small “blotches”, but no big areas of color in any given spot. I have chosen this photo of the ocean.

Step 2) Get the selection

• Choose the Rectangular Marquee tool in the Tool Bar to the left. In the Options Bar above, make sure the Feathering is set to 0, and for Style, choose Fixed Size from the drop-down menu. For the dimensions, type in 3600px for the width and 1px for the height.  (NOTE: the width is in PIXELS, not  INCHES. Don’t miss that–it is IMPORTANT!) We are going to take a sample of this photo from one side to the other.  If you’d like your sample to go from top to bottom, you’ll need to switch these two dimensions.

• Click somewhere on your photo to create a selection that goes the width of it. Since we already set the dimensions of the selection, you do not need to click and drag, but just click. You can click and hold, and drag the selection around to place it exactly where you want it, but it won’t change the dimensions. And if you don’t like where you placed it, just press Ctrl D (Mac: Cmd D) to deselect, and try again. (Remember, this selection is only 1 pixel tall, so you may not even be able to see both the top and bottom border of the selection.)

• Once you have your selection, choose Edit>Copy, or you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl C (Mac: Cmd C.)

Step 3) Paste the selection into a new document

• Choose File>New, and create a new document that is 12 inches wide and 12 inches tall, with a resolution of 300 and a white background. Click OK once you have entered these values.

• Choose Edit>Paste, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl V (Mac: Cmd V) to paste the selection from the photo into this document. Again, this selection is only 1 pixel tall, so it may be difficult to see.

Step 4) Stretch the pasted piece to cover the page

• Press Ctrl T (Mac: Cmd T) to get a transform outline.
• Using a center handle, click and drag so that the pasted piece is stretched all the way to the top of the page. Then click and drag the other center handle down until it stretches to the bottom of the page.

• Now it should cover the whole page.  (If your selection did not cover the entire width of the page, just use a side handle and stretch it out the same as we just did.) Once it covers the whole page, you can double click on it to accept the transformation. This will also make it darker. Mine looks like this:

Step 5) Create the plaid

• Press Ctrl J (Mac: Cmd J) to duplicate this striped layer.
• Choose Edit>Transform>Rotate 90° CW.
• Reduce the Opacity of this layer to 50% by using the slider at the top of the Layers panel.

• Press Ctrl E (Mac: Cmd E) to merge these two striped layers together, and now you have your plaid paper! Did you ever imagine we would get this from a photo of the ocean?

Step 6) Adjust the colors

If you’d like to change the colors of your plaid, just press Ctrl U (Mac: Cmd U) to open the Hue Saturation dialog box, and adjust the sliders to your liking. For a monochromatic look, check the Colorize box in the lower right hand corner before adjusting the sliders. Once your adjustments are done, click OK.

Here are several different versions of my plaid paper.

This paper doesn’t have any texture at this point, but we’ll have to save adding texture for another tip! Be sure to post your plaid paper creations in the Tip of the Week gallery. And have a great week!

Credits: Tutorial by Jenny Binder, www.HeirloomScrapbooks.com.

Download a PDF version of this “Pretty Plaids” tutorial.

Windows: Right click on the link and choose “Save Target As” or a similar command.
Mac: Click on the link to download the file.

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