How To Make A Piece Of Paper With A Folded Corner In Photoshop

Written on Friday, August 24th, 2007 by Jeremy Steele

Please note: these screenshots are from photoshop 7, so some labels and such may be moved in newer versions.

In this tutorial we will create a simple piece of paper with a folded corner. This is really easy to do, and it is incredibly handy if you are a geek like me and do custom icon design. We will be creating this:

Step 1: Create a new file with a nice size like 500 by 500 pixels, at 72 pixels/inch.

Step 2: Paint the background black with the paint bucket.

Step 3: Choose the colors for your paper. I chose a light gray (ACACAC) for the foreground and a darker one for the background (949494). Whatever colors you choose make sure your background is darker than the foreground or else you will need to reverse any gradients in this tutorial.

Step 4: Create a new layer.

Step 5: Use the rectangle tool to create a good sized rectangle on the new layer. Make sure fill pixels is selected (3rd button in options toolbar).

Step 6: Form a selection around the rectangle by command-clicking or control-clicking on the layer.

Step 7: Use the gradient tool to form a gradient from the bottom-left side to the top-right side of the rectangle. Make sure foreground to background is selected for the gradient.

Step 8: Now we will create the fold. I usually use the pen tool to create the triangle, since I love the pen. To make things even simpler show the grid, then use that to help you create the triangle. I have my grid set to show a gridline every 32 pixels, and have 8 subdivisions. You can configure the grid in the Preferences->Guides, Grid, and Slices panel. Make the fold as big as you want.

Step 9: Go into the path palette and click the load selection button (make sure the path was closed off with the pen tool!)

Step 10: Go to layer -> New -> Layer via cut. Select this new layer, which contains the fold.

Step 11: Do Edit -> Transform -> Rotate 180.

Step 12: Select the layer the same way you did with the rectangle and do another gradient, the same exact way (bottom-left to top-right). This gives a bit of a “fold” effect.

Step 13: Open up the layer styles panel for the fold and click Drop Shadow. I only change the angle to 95 degrees (make sure Use Global Light is unchecked!) and I set distance to 2 pixels, the rest of the options are left at the default position. This gives some depth to the fold without making it too extreme.

Enjoy! The paper with a folded corner is now complete. You can make it even better by adding in strokes, changing the gradients, or heck why not do a nice Web 2.0 effect?