Create Postage Stamps with Your Images
Method One: (the old fashioned way – do it yourself)
I just did a really fun tutorial from Gavin Hoey at TipSquirrel. This site has lots of short fun tutorials. This is one from a few months ago and is called “Old Postage Stamp Effect in Photoshop.” Here is an example of following the tutorial pretty closely.
The original image was cropped and Matt Kloskowski’s Lightroom preset Matt’s Vintage Style was applied along with a few adjustments to get the correct colors. I wanted a vintage look since the postmark has a 1968 date on it. I also found out that stamps cost only 6 cents then. The image was brought into Photoshop to begin the stamp look. Gavin has graciously given us the brown envelop background and the two postmarks as a download to help complete the tutorial. Ok, here goes the quick tutorial version – check out Gavin’s short video for a visual understanding.
1. Open up your image.
2. Set Color Picker to default Blank and White.
3. Go to Image – Canvas Size and increase the canvas by 10%
4. Unlock background layer by double clicking on the layer.
5. Select Eraser Tool and in Options set brush Mode to Pencil, Size 100 pixels and in the Brush Panel, set Spacing to 150%. Click on top left corner once, then hold SHIFT+click on upper right corner, SHIFT+click on bottom right corner, SHIFT+click on top left corner to complete the outside of the image with perforated edges.
6. Add text layer to indicate the cost of the stamp.
7. Go to Layers – Merge Visible to preserve transparency for edges.
8. Open up background, in this case the brown texture Gavin provided.
9. Drag stamp layer into this image and close the stamp image. Free Transform (CTRL+T to center and adjust on paper texture.
10. Go to File – Place and choose post-mark-lines-GAVIN-HOEY. Free Transform (CTRL+T to size and place along top of stamp. Change Layer Blend Mode to Multiply and reduce opacity.
11. Go to File – Place and choose post-mark-GAVIN-HOEY. Free Transform (CTRL+T) to size, rotate slightly and place in upper left of image. Change Layer Blend Mode to Multiply and reduce opacity.
12. Highlight stamp layer and open Layer Style at bottom of Layers Palette. Select Bevel and Emboss and change Depth to 144 in my case, Size to 32 and Soften to 7. Change Shadow Mode Color to H37/S79/B35 for a nice soft brown.
That’s it. I used OnOne’s PhotoTools Professional Edition 2.6 software and added an Antique Color set to Soften at 41% opacity. I used OnOne’s PhotoFrame 4.6 Professional Edition to Dave Cross’s Frame 17. I love both of these products and use them all the time.
Method Two: (the easy way)
I just created another stamp image using pshero’s Photoshop tutorial and file with a stamp template that can be downloaded by scrolling to the bottom of their tutorial. This is a really simple way to get a quick stamp effect if you do not want to go through all the steps. They also include some wonderful brush postmarks from Kiyay71677 on the Deviant Art site to add on top of your stamp. If you want postmarks indicating that are very nice but contain UPS and FedEx stamps, check the Redheadstock Brushes also at Deviant Art. I created the above stamp image using a tutorial from 123RF’s website called Cloudy Text Effect. They should have included the vintage look in the title as it is a great effect and the Cloud Text Brush was easy to create. To make it easy for you to try, I created a Photoshop Action called SJ-Vintage Effect Action to use. You can adjust the Hue/Sat Adjustment Layer and Layer Style to taste. Run this action on your original image background layer. I also created the Cloud Text & Smoke Brush to download and add to top layer of action. It can create nice good looking white heavy smoke or clouds.
Finally I created this Valentine Stamp using the same template from the tutorial above. The center hearts are My Valentine Shapes from Brusheezy. The really cute cupid brushes can be downloaded for free. I put each stroke on its own layer and then copied the layer a couple of time to get the pure white look I was after. The little hearts are just one really nice scatter brush from digitalTouch on Deviant Art. I used my old standby font from Cosmi that I used in previous valentine blogs. So here is my final stamp.
Well that about does it for this blog. Hope you get a chance to try Gavin’s tutorial or at least download the template, brushes and action in Method Two. (Check out pshero’s website for other great tutorials while there.) It is fun to give your images a different look sometimes…..Digital Lady Syd
Digital Lady Syd's Fun Photoshop Blog 