Photoshop-Fu: The Fake Sticker Effect

Ever wonder how those fancy shmancy illustrators create the “sticker effect” for their characters?

Here’s a quick and easy method to do just that, using Photoshop.

First, start out with your image – make sure your character is on a separate layer (this is very important).

I generally keep my inks on a separate layer from my colors. What I want to do is combine the inks and colors without altering the original ink / color layers. So, duplicate the inks layer, then duplicate the colors layer (Command-J performs a layer duplication). Next, flatten the two duplicated layers with Command-E.

Your layers should look like this:

Next, on the flattened inks/color layer, choose the Layer Effects option (in the Layers palette) and apply an outer stroke. In my case, I set the size to 16px and the color to white.

Add a drop shadow and adjust its distance such that you can see a slight bit of shadow peeking out from underneath the stroke.

And there you go!

To make your sticker look more convincing, consider adding a textured background, like the ruled paper texture I’ve used.

That’s all there is to it!

-Krishna

Krishna June 17, 2012 how to, Photoshop, sticker effect