Realistic Ribbons in Photoshop

With all of the Digital Scrapbooking websites out there, I got curious the other day and decided to check out how their digital wares are merchandised. What I found were websites with pictures of products good enough for the shelves - except that they aren't "real". They're 100% image ... and I fell in love.

This guide walks you through the process of creating a realistic card of ribbons. You might never need this image, but you'll learn several cool tricks and effects if you work through it. Promise. And what you wind up with will make you proud enough to want to try more.

To follow this guide, you'll need a copy of Adobe Photoshop (versions 7 through the current CS3 will work fine). I'm using CS3 as this guide is being written, so some of the tools may be located in different places in your version - but they're all there.

Ribbon Card in Photoshop - The Steps

We'll be working this out by creating pieces for the card, and assembling it when all the pieces are ready. So the pieces we'll be working with are staples, ribbons, and a metal grommet (the thing that products are hung by on the shelves). Each of these will go on a "card" that makes it look like the ribbon is wrapped around it.

The Staples

1. New Canvas - Open a new canvas (File, New) in Photoshop that is sized about 200 x 200 pixels in RGB mode with a white background. Then, set your foreground color to light gray and your background color to black.

2. Rounded Rectangle - We want the corners of our staple to be just a bit rounded. Select your rounded rectangle shape tool (it hides behind the rectangle shape tool - just right-click the icon to select the correct one) and then look up. Under the main toolbar is a second toolbar that holds all the options for the tool you're using. Locate the box that says "Radius" and enter "5 px" inside it. Then, draw a long thin shape across your canvas to represent a staple. Right-click the layer when you're done and choose "Rasterize Layer".

3. Apply Styles - Now we're going to make this rectangle look like a staple. To start, you'll need to access your Layer Styles. Go to "Layer", choose "Styles", and click "Stroke".