Cardboard Cut-out Effect

Cardboard Cut-out Effect
(for notice boards and such)

A number of years ago, I designed a notice board for the Catholic Students Society in NUS. I was rather pleased with the result and considered it a really easy way to make impressive looking notice boards or cards etc. Here, I will share the steps on how to make you own cut-out design.

I used photoshop for this effect. I’m assuming that you are fairly fluent in PS; enough to play with selections, colours and filters, and generally understand what I’m talking about.

STEP 1
Pick a picture
• Choose a not too complicated picture that you can imagine stylizing into the cut-out effect. As an example, I chose one of my favourite photos, VanGogh’s Starry Night.
• You can use the artististic>cutout filter to give a preview of how it might look. If you can’t get something presentable using 3 or 4 levels then you might want to consider using a different picture



STEP 2
Cut out the pieces using PS
- Imagine how you want to ‘stack-up’ the pieces.
- Start with the largest piece in the background first, and trace it out using the magnetic lasso tool.
- Use the eyedrop (I) tool and pick an average colour from the background which you cut out.
- Create a new layer and Fill (g) the colour into the shape that you selected.



STEP 3
Repeat for all the pieces
- Hide the new shape that you created, and select the next biggest shape that goes on top
- Repeat for each piece as you ‘build up’ the image piece by piece. Experiment with different shapes and colours.
- Create each new shape in a new layer, and build it up from bottom to top. Name each layer according to its colour.
- When you’re done you might have something like this. I used only seven colours


STEP 4
Colour matching

- Now, we want to buy some paper so that we can actually make the thing, but the likelihood is that you will not find paper the exact same shade as in your picture. So what we’ll do is to buy the colours that most match the colours that we have.
- To help us, I draw a colour grid on a new layer that looks something like this:


- The colours on top are the original colours, and the colours below are perhaps the best matches that you can get. Here you can experiment with replacing your picture with the new colour and seeing how it looks. If you are dissatisfied, at least you can make adjustments before cutting the paper. The new colours I’ve used appear to have given it a rather psychedelic look. Maybe I can swap some colours or buy another colour, but for this example, I just assume that we nicely managed to find the shades that we wanted.


STEP 5
Preparing the templates

- Now that your masterpiece is complete, we want to print out the templates so that we can use them to cut our vanguard sheet into the desired shapes.
- To do this, we first resize the document to the size that you want. Lets suppose that we have a notice board that is 1m high, so we go to Image>Image Size, and set the height as 100cm. Deselect “Resample Image” so that the resolution will remain the same. No point having a 50megapixel image that just eats up our memory; we just want the units to change. What you’ll need to note is the resolution of the image. In my case, it is 20.93 pixels/inch.
- Next, we open a new blank document with an A4 (or A3) size depending on the size of the coloured paper that you can get. For this notice board I assume we managed to get A3 paper. Select A3 as the size, and then input the same pixel resolution as your image (in my case, 20.93px/in).
- Now, we transfer the pieces over. For example, we copy and paste the black houses in the foreground into the A3 document.
- We’ll do some creative manipulation to fit the cut-out unto the paper, saving as much space as possible. Use the transform tool to rotate and flip, but not resize! Your template will now look something like this



- Save the template for that colour and repeat for the other colours. Cut up the pieces if need be. For example the large green tree in the foreground cannot possible be cut in one piece. You’ll have to decide the best way to make the seams as natural as possible. Rather than make just a horizontal cut, consider cutting along the natural contours of the tree.

STEP 6
Printing and Cutting

- When all the templates are ready, we print them out on plain paper to aid our cutting.
- I used the ‘find edge’ to render the outlines for all the shapes,
- And then print them out on A4. Your template is A3? No problem. Just used the PS ‘print with preview’ controls to manipulate your print and just print one half at a time. You can then align the two halves on your A3 cardboard.
- I used scotch tape to attach the templates to the coloured paper, and then cut.
- It’s good if you have help cutting.
- You shouldn’t have too many pieces to get utterly confused so when you’re done cutting, you can arrange your pieces to form your masterpiece. Glue or stick them unto your notice board in the correct order, and you’re done!