Introduction: How to Make Polaroid Effect in Photoshop
It was a pretty easy job and I thought it will be a great idea to show you how to do it. You can use a single image – like in this tutorial - or you can collect more images into a single project. Take this image and prepare for an easy tutorial!
Step 1: How to Make Polaroid Effect in Photoshop
Open the image in Photoshop. Because the picture is tilted you need to straighten it.
Step 2:
In order to do that you must go to Tools Palette > Eyedropper > Ruler Tool.
Step 3:
Click and hold down the mouse button and drag a line like you see in the picture below (the white one).
Step 4:
After that go to Image > Rotate Canvas > Arbitrary.
Step 5:
Let Photoshop decide what’s the right angle and click Ok.
Step 6:
And now the image looks ok.
Step 7:
Take the Crop Tool and crop the image like you see below.
Step 8:
You could have done this without doing the above steps, just using Free Transform (Ctrl + T), but I wanted to show you another way you can straighten your images.
Let’s work on the Polaroid effect now!
Duplicate your background image. It’s always better to have a backup copy in case you’ve done something wrong and you don’t want to keep pressing the undo button.
Take the Rectangular Marquee Tool and make a small selection anywhere in the image. You can move your selection by holding down the Space key. Copy and paste the selection. Make a new layer using the New Layer Icon in the Layer Palette. Turn the other layers invisible and take the Rectangular Marquee Tool again. Make a selection around the first one and keep in mind that you’ll going to make it look like a Polaroid photo, so make the selection look as the border of the Polaroid.
Step 9:
Press D key to reset the foreground and background color to black and white. Now press Ctrl + Backspace to fill the selection with white. Deselect (Ctrl + D). Drag this layer under Layer 1.
Step 10:
Let’s merge these last two layers together. Select Layer 1, hold down Ctrl key and click on the Layer 2 (but not on its thumbnail – this will tell Photoshop to load layer’s selection and you do not want this now). Now press Ctrl + E. You can rename the layer: double-click where it says Layer 1.
Step 11:
Now you can use Free Transform to rotate the layer. If you want you can use the Warp Option to make the image a little curled.
Step 12:
Step 13:
Keep doing the last two steps until you have the result you want.
Step 14:
Let’s apply a Blending Option. Double-click on one layer and go to Drop Shadow. Apply the next settings: Blend Mode: Multiply, Opacity: 47 %, Angle 148, Distance: 23 pixels, Spread: 23 pixels, Size: 8 pixels.
Step 15:
Right-click on the same layer and copy its layer style. Select the other layers, but not the Background layer and paste the layer style.
Step 5
Make a new layer above the Background layer and fill it with white. Reduce it’s opacity to 45%. This will make you Polaroid effect stand out. And you’re done!
