How To Create A Postage Stamp In Photoshop

Posted on 19. Nov, 2009 by Shawn Ramsey in Articles

In this tutorial, I’ll take you through the steps to help you create your very own customized postage stamp. We will start with any image of your choice and, step-by-step create the perforated edges and other effects commonly associated with stamps.

I have also included the .PSD file for download if you need some help, or if you just want to skip the steps and grab the template.

Postage Stamp Tutorial

Step One:

Open the photo that you wish to use as your stamp.

Step Two:

Press (Mac: Command-A) (PC: Control-A) to select the the entire image. Press (Mac: Shift-Command-J) (PC: Shift-Control-J) to place the image onto its own layer.

Step Three:

Let’s add some white space around the image so that we will have plenty of room to create the hole-punched edge of the stamp. Go to Image>Canvas Size to bring up the canvas size window.  Select the relative check box and enter 2 inches for both the width and height.  Change the canvas extension color to white.

Your image should now look similar to this.

Step Four:

Add a new blank layer beneath your image layer by holding the (Mac: Command) (PC:Control Key) and clicking on the create a new layer icon in your layers palette. Press the “M” key to select the rectangular marquee tool and drag out a rectangle that extends about a 1/2 inch outside of your image. Now press the letter “D” and then “X” to change your foreground color to white, and fill the rectangle with white by pressing (Mac: Option-Delete) (PC: Alt-Backspace). Deselect the rectangle by pressing (Mac: Command-D) (PC: Control-D).

Note: Turning on the grid lines can really help you lay out your rectangle perfectly around your image. To do this, go to View>Show>Grid.

Step Five:

Because you are working with a white background, you will not be able to see the white rectangle that you just created. Let’s add a drop shadow to make it visible. Click on the add a layer style icon at the bottom of the layers palette and choose drop shadow. In the dialog box that opens up, change the angle to around 71 degrees, the size to around 16 and the distance to 3. Click OK to make the changes.

Your image should now look like this:

Step Six:

We now need to knock out some holes along the edges of the white border. Press the “E” key to switch to eraser tool. Make sure that in the options bar at the top, that the mode is set to brush. Click on the icon beside the word “Brush” in the Options Bar to bring up the brush picker and choose the 19 px hard-edged brush.

Now choose brush in the window menu in the right-hand side of Photoshop to open up the brush palette. Click on brush tip shape, select the spacing check box and slide the spacing bar over to around 190%.

Note: You may have to play around with the spacing percentage to get it to work just right for your stamp.

Step Seven:

In the layers palette hold the (Mac: Command Key) (PC: Control Key) and click on the thumbnail of the layer where the white rectangle is located. The rectangle should now be highlighted with a dashed line.

With the white rectangle selected, press the “P” key to select the pen tool and go under the window menu and select paths. From the flyout menu choose make work path and click OK.

Now click on the newly created “work path” and again access the flyout menu this time selecting stroke path.

When the stroke path dialog box appears, choose eraser and turn off the simulate pressure check box.

Step Eight:

After clicking OK, the eraser tool will  knock out holes along the path you created earlier, creating the perforated edge stamp effect.  Click below the work path to deselect it in order to hide the line of the path.

Your stamp should now look like this:

Step Last:

Now it’s starting to come together. All we need to do is add a little text to finish up the project.  I used Arial Bold with the color #a75d36 for the number “42″, Arial Regular for the “USA” and Arno Pro for “God Bless America”. So that the fonts do not blend in too much with the image, I added a drop shadow with a distance of 1px, spread of 0%, size of 0px and an opacity of 50% to all of the text.

Download: Stamp Tutorial .PSD

Credits and Resources

• The American Flag image come from xxoblivionxx.

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Tags: photoshop, tips