Making A Postage Stamp

In this tutorial, we’re going to create a postage stamp out of a photo. This is a nice effect that’s simple to achieve. We’ll also look at a quick technique for giving a flat image a little bit of 3D pop.
First start with a blank canvas big enough for your stamp. I’m using a 250x250px canvas with a grey background.

On a new layer (I’m calling mine “stamp base”) take your rectangular marquee tool and create a rectangle for the base of your stamp. Fill it with white. Then hit Ctrl+A, Ctro+X, and Ctrl+V to center it on your canvas.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Creating A Postage Stamp Fig. 1

Next, we need to make the perforated edges of the stamp.

Now select your paint brush and open the brush pallete. The size of yoru brush shape will depend on the size of your stamp, but for the stamp I’m creating, a 15px round brush will work fine.

Set the Hardness to 100% and the spacing to 150% as shown below.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Creating A Postage Stamp Fig. 2

Create a new layer (“edge”) and set your foreground color to something other than your foreground and background ncolor, so you can see the stroke we’re about to make.

Next, Ctrl+Click on the icon for the “stamp base” layer in the layers palette to load the selection. Now go to the Path palette and click the “make work path from selection” button.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Creating A Postage Stamp Fig. 3

Now click on the options menu for the Path palette (the little triangle in the top right of the palette) and select stroke path. The brush you created earlier should come up as the default took. Click OK.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Creating A Postage Stamp Fig. 4

You should be left with something like this:

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Creating A Postage Stamp Fig. 5

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Added Wednesday, August 30th, 2006 at 8:53 am under Drawing & Painting.