One of the effects I've seen requested a lot is the "ripped edge". Here's a reasonable facsimile using only PaintShop Pro.

1. Find a picture that you want to destroy ;-) and open it in Paintshop Pro. (Tip - make a copy to play with, that way you won't harm the original).

2. Using the lasso too, draw a line across the photo (make it as jagged as you like - this will be your "tear" line). Continue the selection along the edges of the photo and back to your start point. You'll end up with a piece of the photo selected.

3. Make sure that your background colour is white, and cut the selection to the clipboard (Ctrl-C).

4. Open a new image, white background, larger than your original. Give yourself plenty of room to work in, you'll be able to crop later. Paste (Ctrl-E) the selection into the new image. Do *NOT* deselect.

5. I like to rotate the pieces of the image slightly at this stage. (Image, rotate) If my tear is roughly vertical, I generally rotate the left-hand selection to the left, and the right hand selection slightly to the right. For horizontal tears, I usually rotate the top to the left and the bottom to the right. There's no particular rationale for it - I just like the way it looks. Feel free to rotate or not, as you like.

6. Deselect the image, and go to the retouch tool. Choose smudge, opacity 20, paper texture none. The size is dependent on your original image size - generally between 5 and 20 works well. For shape, I generally use a horizontal brush on horizontal "tears" and a vertical brush on vertical "tears". Working carefully (zoom in if necessary), use the smudge tool *only on the very edge* of the torn area to pull "feathers" of colour out onto the white background. Be careful not to smudge further into the picture than one or two pixels along the edge.

7. Use the Magic Wand, tolerance 5, feather 0 to select the background. The edges and their underlying background shouldn't be selected at these tolerances. Go to (S)elections, (I)nvert.

8. Add a drop shadow. Now, here comes a bit of judgment. The torn edge will be edged in white. I generally leave it, because if you look at a real torn photograph you will notice that it consists of a layer of emulsion over white paper, and most ripped photos do show a white edge. However, if you want to make less obvious, do not deselect after adding the drop shadow. Go back to your smudge tool and use smudge, or darken or a combination of both to bring the colour closer to the edge.

9. Now you have a torn picture half. If you want both halves showing, go back to your original image, invert the selection, cut it into the clipboard and paste near your torn half (make sure not to paste it over the shadow. Repeat the technique on this segment, making sure to match the setting you used on the first half. Voila! A ripped picture.

Note: To get the white edge on the second image, you may have to add your original shadow, then adjust your drop shadow to horizontal/vertical settings of 0 (zero)and add a second shadow.

Note: To get the drop shadow placed properly, without affecting the first 'torn' picture, work with it in a new window, copy/pasting it next to the other torn image when it is 'shadowed'.

PSP 4.0 Tips and Tricks Index