Photoshop Tutorial: Candy in a Plastic Wrapper

We had a little brain-share session with the talented Josh Corliss after work today and he was kind enough to share some of his endless Photoshop knowledge. During this discussion he asked the question; “How often do you use the plastic wrap filter?”

Um, like NEVER!

I went home totally inspired because it dawned on me that the plastic wrap filter was perfect for creating some candy wrapped in plastic and it would be a nice addition to my lollipop header. After some trial and error I think I have a pretty solid example.

Here’s how I did it.

STEP 1. Add a dark background layer – this can be anything. Next create your candy. I used some layer effects to give it a bit of texture and shine.

STEP 2. Because I want this candy to be hand-made I used the warp tool to make it less “perfect”.

STEP 3. Be sure to give your candy a nice shadow – not too harsh and not too soft. This is easy to overlook but it provides the candy with dimension. I did this with a dark circle and a blur filter.

STEP 4. It’s time to create the wrapper. Start with a grey rectangle shape. The grey is important because you will need to add highlights and shadows later.Use your pen tool to create points on the top and bottom of the wrapper.

STEP 5. Rasterize your layer. Create the wrapper seals using the dodge and burn tool. This is simply drawing out the lights and darks. I also added some highlights on the “points”.

STEP 6. Use the doge and burn tools again to create the highlights and shadows on the wrapper. Don’t go overboard on this otherwise your wrapper will look unnatural.

STEP 7. Use the warp tool to tweak the shape by pushing the sides in. You can finally add the plastic wrap filter. Play with the sliders to get the effect just right. Cover your candy with the wrapper.

STEP 8. To give the wrapper some transparency set the layer’s blend mode to Linear Light. Then copy this layer and move it beneath the red candy and set that layer to screen with 50% opacity or so. I then experimented with some layer effects to give the wrapper more dimension. This is the result.