Long ago in a galaxy far, far away (a few years ago when I shared a house with some roommates) I started a blog, similar to this one. Back then I was in the midst of school and did not have much experience. The premise of the blog was the same, to share what knowledge I did have with the community to do my part in the sharing of information, however, with my busy schedule and lack of committment, the blog faded away after a few articles.

Since then I have learned a lot and gained valuable experience. The previous articles were good, but my mindset was not. I have decided to resurrect and update a few "oldies but goodies" from the previous blog. This tutorial did not need any updates other than a few grammatical errors, but has been revived to teach young designers once again.

Let's Get This Thing Started

I am going to show you how I created a nice looking clipboard using a single photograph as well as blending modes within Photoshop.

The first step, obviously, is to open a new file.  In my case I chose the resolution 612 x 792 pixels, because it is clearly the most standard size utilized throughout the universe.  Fill in the background layer with a color of your choice.  I recommend something relatively unsaturated and neutral in value.

I created new layer and drew a rounded rectangle in the overall shape of the clipboard body.

Play with the blending options to give it some texture, three-dimensionality, and shadow.  I used a cardboard pattern and the settings below.

This gave me the following:

I wanted better highlights so I duplicated the clipboard layed, cleared the layer effects, and set the layer fill to 0%.  Then I applied a stroke and with the following settings.

Getting Down And Dirty

The next step was the dirty it up a bit.  I made a couple new layers and used some grunge brushes to make it look more used and abused.  I used one layer with the layer mode set to multiply for the dark splotches and one layer with the mode set to screen for the light grunge effects.  You can see the result below both on it's own layer and then applied to the clipboard.

Next I found an image of a real clipboard on stock.xchng to steal the clip itself.

After I used the pen tool to cut it out, I copied it over and placed it accordingly.  Then I applied a dropshadow with the following settings to give it more depth.

This is where it was at after cutting and placing the clip.

I created a layer between the clip and the board and manually painted in some shadows to add realistic depth to the image.  Blending options can get you far but the randomness of manually painted shadows heightens the realism dramatically.

It's All Coming Together

Using a crumpled paper pattern and the techniques above I created some layers for the paper between the clip and the board.

The final step was to add some texture to the background and on top of the final image.  I created two layers above all the rest.  One with the gradient below set to Overlay at 15% transparency.

The other I filled with black and used the filter Pixelate>Mezzotint>Fine dots to create noise which I set to Multiply at 3% opacity to give the image a more photographic feel.

It's Alive!

The final result can be seen again below.

Give Me Some Feedback

I hope you learned more from this tutorial than how to create a clipboard step by step.  What was the most helpful thing you learned? What kinds of tutorials would you like to see next? Did you gain knowledge from reading this? Digg or Float this post or leave a comment below.