Tutorial: Digital Cut Paper

Tutorial: Digital Cut Paper from Scott E Franson on Vimeo.

This is a basic tutorial to create a cut paper effect using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

I am sorry, The video ends abruptly. I am trying to work out the bugs in the process.

Creating a RGB Color Pallet that is CMYK Safe

I prefer to work in Adobe Photoshop in RGB Mode. RGB stands the primary colors of light which are Red, Green and Blue. When a book is printed the color mode that is used is CMYK. CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key Color (which is Black). It is also referred to as process color. Process color cannot reproduce all of the colors of RGB. If I am not careful I can find that I have use colors that are outside of the CMYK gamut and will not print well. Here is a tutorial that can help by creating a RGB color pallet that is CMYK safe.

Scratchboard, Linocut Tutorial

Dylan this is for you. I will add to the instructions soon. This is just the beginning of a tutorial you requested. The tutorial is a work in progress. The title of the piece is Sleeping Beauty. The directions assume that you have some basic knoledge of photoshop. If you have any questions about the process. Leave them in the comments and I will try to be more clear.

Line Drawing

I begin with a basic line drawing. This example is done in the computer, but I usually draw this step and then scan it into the computer once I get the design worked out.

Define the Shapes

I made a violet background and then used a white paintbrush to fill the shapes. The line drawing from above is placed on a seperate layer with the opacity of the layer lowered. The paint brush or pencil tool can be used for this step.

Basic fast color fill

I fill in the colors on a seperate layer from the line layer. I use the magic wand tool with "sample all layers" checked in the options bar. once a shape is selected with the wand tool I go to Select> Modify Selection> Expand. This allows me to expand the selection so that there aren't white halos around each of the color shapes.

Basic Shadow

The shadow is another layer. In this case it is a blue violet. Them the layer is set to multiply mode so that it mixes with the colors beneath it.

Coloring a scanned line in Photoshop

Scan in a grayscale drawing and adjust levels as desired. Select All and Copy the image.

Create a new file. File New. The size of the image will be the size of the image you copied.

Open the Channels pallette. Create a new channel. The default name will be Alpha 1. Select the Alpha 1 channel and Paste.

Return to the Layers pallette and make a new layer. Title the layer "line."

From the menu bar go to Select > Load Selection. Choose Alpha 1 and click the invert box.


Choose a color other than black. Option + delete (on a Mac) will fill the selection with the foreground color.

Hide the Background layer and you will see that the elements that were white in your scan will be transparent.

At this point I lock the transparency on the line layer. This allows me to paint the line any color I would like with a basic paint brush (the red in the above image is an example of painting with a basic brush with the transparency locked).

Painting on the background layer will look like this.

Adding a Watermark to an image

Step 1: Create 2 layers in Adobe Photoshop. One with your image and one with the desired watermark in black.

Step 2: On the layers palette click the effects button at the bottom and select Bevel and Emboss from the pop up menu.

Step 3: Change the size to 2 px (this is for a 72 ppi image)

Step 4: Change the layer mode to Screen. Save for web and you are ready to upload your image to the web.

How to add texture to a Photoshop brush

This brush stroke is made with the Hard-Round 19 pixles brush.


This texture is scanned from a board that I textured with gesso. When the gesso dried, I painted over the complete surface with a thin acrylic wash of black. The paint settled into the low areas of the gesso. (The boards that I paint on are 8.5 x 11 so that they will lay flat on my scanner. The textures are scanned at 300ppi)

Once the texture is scanned in—Select All>Edit>Define Pattern—The texture will be added to the end of your pattens pallet.


This brush stroke is made with the same Hard-Round 19 pixels brush, with the following changes in the brushes palette. I selected texture, selected the new texture from the patterns palette and changed the brush mode to Multiply.



This brush stroke (red) is made with the same Hard-Round 19 pixels brush, with the mode changed to Subtract. Notice that it is a is opposite.



This is a combination. The green is the brush with the mode set to multiply and the red is the same brush with the mode set to subtract.

This is a very basic concept. Give it a try and let me know if you have any questions.