Tear it up

Worn and torn for extra interest and realism

Fake fur and ‘fake’ tears. Using ‘Circus Circus’ and “festival worn photos’

Many years ago, when I first started working digitally with old scanned family photos, I was frustrated by the juxtaposition of shabby old photo with a sharp, clean stroked edge or photo mat.

Sometimes that contrast works really well. But on a generally shabby, heritage themed page it often just looked wrong.

And sometimes I wanted a more vintage feel for a new digital photo.

But scanning the photo and getting it just right to be easily selected and extracted using the much less sophisticated software of the time was not easy, and there were no workarounds for easily but super-realistically ‘ageing’ new photos.

My solution was to search through my old photos and to hunt out and buy tattered old postcards to find the best ‘worn’ and rubbed edges. I then scanned them and painstakingly extracted them to make my own worn photo templates that I could drop a scanned photo OR digital photo into for instant interesting worn edge and bent and creased effects.

The OG worn photo edges

Over time I experimented with adding optional photo effects through layers (for people who wanted a quick easy drag and drop alternative to playing with photo actions etc).

I also added more torn options. You can see the various results of this playing here …

And in these YouTube videos:

My “festival” set with some particularly bold and fun (but still optional!) effects are in this week’s Holiday Treats

Anyway, that’s a quick peek into one of my own favourite ways to add some interesting detail, depth and realism to a page.

Of course, nowadays extracting via AI is so much easier than it was (I am still exhausted years on thinking about the work involved in extracting those edges!) but the torn and worn effects are still so much fun, for old or new pics.

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YOUR HOLIDAY TREATS AWAIT

You can find many of the creative assets I have used in the post over at The Lilypad where the final batch from Rachel and I have are now discounted.

PS if you are not seeing 15 items, it could be an issue with Chrome browsers, in which case you can the ‘Holiday Treats’ store section in the sidebar of The Lilypad store

A little gallery of my own favourites with some of the ‘treats’:

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DON’T MISS OUT

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