Freelance Graphic Designer London

How to create paper, receipts or newspaper with torn edges

I was asked by a client to present their final figures in a pitch they were doing in the form of a receipt. I thought it was quite a nice little Photoshop trick and a nice idea. Here’s how.

Draw the outline of the receipt, or piece of paper, with the Pen Tool (P), and turn it into a selection by Cmd/Ctrl clicking the Path in the Paths palette. Switch to Quick Mask Mode (Q) and your selection will turn 50% red (you can change that in Preferences). Go Filter > Pixelate > Crystallize. A cell size of 3 will give you the torn edge effect. Switch back to Standard Mode (Q) to return the quick mask to a “marching ants” selection.

Fill the selection with a suitable linear gradient and there’s your paper.

Two typefaces I found that looked similar to the printing you get on these receipts were called FacsimileLL and Dot Matrix. FacsimileLL is above. I used the Free Transform Tool (Cmd/Ctrl-T) to size the type onto the paper. Remember, holding down Cmd/Ctrl whilst dragging the corner points creates the irregular shapes you need.

Lastly, for the drop shadow I, for once, didn’t use Photoshop’s own marvellous Layer Style. I opted to copy the paper layer, darken a blur it and Free Transform it irregularly (holding down Cmd/Ctrl whilst dragging the corner points) so it looks as though one corner is curling up slightly.

My client won the pitch, by the way, these little details really help!