Torn Photo Effect

In this tutorial we'll see how to make one of your photos look like if you tore a part of it.

You'll be able to apply this effect to any other photo or scanned piece of paper.

We'll use this photo.

Get the full size image here (we'll need it fullsize to draw the tear).

Set the Zoom level to 300% and pick the Pen Tool, select Paths

and start drawing a path from the top middle of the image. This will be our tear. Draw each anchor point really near the other and give the path some zig-zag aspect.

Draw down until about half of the photo.

If you zoom back to 50% you should have something like this.

Select the Brush Tool and from the brush menu click Reset Brushes.

Select a 1 px brush like in the following image, and set the foreground color to white.

Now pick the Pen Tool again, create a new layer, right click on the path and hit Stroke Layer. You'll hardly see any changes since the line is hidden below the anchor points.

Zoom to 40%, continue the path and close it outside the photo. See below.

In the paths palette right click the path and choose Make Selection.

and apply these settings.

This will generate a selection with the same shape of your path. We'll use this to transform the teared part of the photo.

Click on the background layer and copy the selection, then paste it on a new layer (name this layer Teared).

Place this layer below the tear one (that now will be visible because the path isn't there anymore).

If you zoom to 100% you should see the tear similar to mine.

Duplicate the layer we have just created and hide it (click on the eye on the left, the eye will disappear as well as the layer but you won't notice anything because you have an identical layer below this one. We're duplicating it just to have a backup layer in case we made mistakes)

Click on the Teared layer holding CTRL, this will select the entire layer, now click on the background layer and press DEL, this will remove the selected part from the background layer (you won't see any changes because the background layer is below the Teared one).

Now select the Rectangular Marquee Tool, click on the Teared layer choose Intersect with Selection

and draw a selection like the following one.

Now go to Edit > Free Transform, right click on the selection and choose Distort

then hold CTRL and drag a bit down-right the top left corner of the selection.

Double click on the Teared layer and add this Drop Shadow

Duplicate the background layer, delete the previous (locked) background layer.

Move the new background layer up over all the others but below the white line layer: the layer on the right won't be visible anymore.

Pick the Magick Wand tool and, click on the right white part, then press DEL.

Create a new layer, fill it with white, move it down to the background and you're done.

This is the full size result.

And this is the whole image resized.