All righty, Yeti asked me to do this ages ago after he saw me use it in one of my Little Big Planet wallpapers a while back, so I finally got around to getting some subpar quality screenshots of clear tape creation and got around to writing about it. Hopefully this tutorial will be somewhat useful and easy to understand.
- So here I have a canvas and picture already set out (800 x 600)
- I start with the Rectangle Tool (using a white color), which will start off the clear tape shape (this should start on its own layer separating it from the background and picture layer)
- Right click on the layer with the rectangle and choose Rasterize Layer (for me, it gets rid of those fiddly outlines, but I’m sure there’s a more technical reason for it)
- On the rectangle layer, set the Opacity to 20 (makes it all nifty transparent)
- Ctrl+click on the rectangle layer to select an outline of it (marching dots style)
- Create a new layer above it
- Change to the Gradient Tool (still with the white color – Mode: Normal / Opacity: 90% / Dither / Transparency)
- On that new layer, with the Gradient Tool, click drag outside the rectangle and about 1/5th of the way in on one side (start at 1 and stop at 2)
- Repeat on the other side
- Tape should start looking like this
- On the layer with the gradient, press Ctrl+E or choose to merge it down to the rectangle layer (makes it easier to work with that strip on one layer)
- Select the Polygonal Lasso Tool and make some triangle teeth edges on both side (the torn tape look)
- Delete the lasso-ed edges (though some might want to use quick mask, I’m just lazy and opted to delete, feel free to do either)
- Double click on the tape layer or press the button that looks like a fancy F for the Layer Style menu
- Click Drop Shadow (Opacity: 25 / Angle: 105 / Distance: 2 / Spread: 0 / Size: 4) (gives a nice taped-down shadow to it)
- Click Pattern Overlay (Opacity: 10% / Pattern: Frozen Rain / Scale: 70%) (for splotches in the sticky shadow bits)
- OK it 
- Ctrl+T to transform and move, rotate, and resize the tape to wherever you want it and press Enter to plonk it in place
- Alt+Click dragging the object will make a copy of it if you want a second piece (extra holding power!)
- And there you have Kitn’s cheapo clear tape tutorial
BONUS
- Give some color to your tape by going back into the Layer Styles and clicking on Color Overlay
- Choose a color and go with some snazzy colored tape
Well, hope you found this useful and easy, if you’ve got any questions or like this tutorial, feel free to comment.
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Awesome Tut! *races off to attempt it*
Oh and thx for sharing ^_^
combined with a monochrome or sepia toned screen shot will make a nice “memories” siggy or wallie
awesome! thanks so much for sharing this tutorial!!! i had a lot of fun digitally sticking pieces of tape on paper!! =D
nice!
where/how can i get the frozen rain pattern?
thx!
Thanks for the comment madhatter.
I’m assuming frozen rain is a default pattern available in Photoshop (seeing as I never really downloaded any new patterns). If it doesn’t show up, there should be a button with a small triangle/arrow-facing-right that might have a drop down list of other default patterns in that section. It could be in one of those.
