Create a Folded Paper Effect in Photoshop

How to create the folded paper effect in Photoshop

Welcome to week 5 of the Wired Marketing design masterclass. So we have reached the last week of our journey through photoshop techniques. Well it’s not over just yet, today we have got a cool technique showing you how to create a folded paper effect. This effect can be seen in the letter style email template. You can view it and download it here. So for the final time, grab some spare time and learn this easy photoshop technique. Don’t forget to check out the screencast below that I made to go with this tutorial.

1. Use the rectangle tool to create the paper that you will want to fold.
I used a slightly off white colour for this.

2. Duplicate the paper layer and then changed the colour of the original layer to black.

3. Right click on the new layer and then choose “rasterize layer”. Choose the “polygonal lasso tool” and make a triangle shape in the top right corner of the paper.

4. Click edit > copy. This will make a copy of your selection. Then press the delete button on your keyboard to delete the selection from that layer. Then click edit  > paste . This will leave the copy of the shape over the original layer.


5. With the latest layer selected click image  > adjustment  >  Hue and saturation. Reduce the saturation and brightness to get a darker version of the new shape.

6. click edit > transform > flip vertical. Then position the shape so that it is in line with where you cut the shape from by rotating it.



7. Hold ctrl and click on the shape preview box on the layer to make a selection of the shape. Then with a black to transparent gradient tool, make a shadow on a new layer above the shape layer. Try to keep it at the same angle as the cut to give the effect that the paper is folding. You might need to reduce the opacity on the shadow so that the shadow is not so strong.


8. On the shape layer add a drop shadow using blending options. Reduce the angle and distance. Playing with the opacity will help to get the correct effect as well. Finally hide the black box and you have your folded paper effect.


Here is the finished article:


I hope that you have enjoyed the Wired Marketing Masterclasses. Look out in the future for more Photoshop tutorials and free email templates. Thanks for reading!