Repurpose your Art in Procreate : Digital Papercut into Lightbox

You work hard on your art, so why not give it some new life with a different technique - without starting over completely from scratch? In this week's video, I'll show you step-by-step how to repurpose your Digital Papercut artwork into a Lightbox in Procreate.

Follow along with the video, or check out the basic steps I've outlined below.

• Duplicate your Artwork

  • I recommend duplicating your original artwork, so you don't lose that version.

  • In the Gallery, swipe left on your art and choose Duplicate.

  • If you have your papercuts and lightboxes in different stacks like I do, follow along with the video to see how I move the copy into the right stack.

  • Rename the copy so you know that it's going to be a Lightbox.

• Prep the Papercut layers

  • You already have a lot of the work done with the Digital Papercut - yay!

  • Open/expand all the groups so you can see all the layers.

  • Next, we need to turn on Alpha Lock for all layers except the paper textures.

  • PRO-TIP: In a real lightbox, all the paper is white and the “colors” show up from the light behind it and the different tones are due to how far away the layers are from the light. To get this effect digitally, we’re going to use a Grayscale color palette, using lighter colors closer to the back and darker ones at the front (further from the light). You can download my Free palette here.

  • To create the paper edges and the glow, we're going to re-use the shadow and highlight layers from the papercut art (the middle and bottom layers of each group). We need to turn these white, so choose that in your color panel, and then (with Alpha Lock ON) fill each of those layers, then turn Alpha Lock off.

  • We need to reposition these a bit from where they were in the other tutorial. It will be easier to see if we work on one set at a time. Turn off all the bottom (glow) layers and multi-select all the middle layers - these will be our paper "edges" - align them with the top of the frame and then nudge them straight up until you get your desired thickness of paper.

  • Turn these layers off and turn the glow layers back on. These glow layers all need to have their Blend modes changed to "ADD" individually, then you can multi-select and reposition them to around the same spot as you did the paper edges.

• Add the Lightbox effect

  • Now that you have all your layers set and organized, it’s time to add the magic!

  • One by one, go through the glow layers and adjust them with the transform tool and adding more blur with Adjustments > Gaussian blur if you want more glow.

  • When you're happy with the glow, turn the middle layers back on.

  • Once all your groups have their glow added, come to the top group and add a layer between the two white layers. We’re going to add a gradient here to make the Lightbox look more realistic. Watch the video to see how we do this using the selection tool, but you can also just paint in some black at the top and bottom of the canvas and then use the Gaussian Blur.

  • Add another layer above this one and change the blend mode to “Color”

  • Now you can color drop any color onto this layer to light up your box! (you can even do gradients! See the video for how to do this)

• Share your Art!

  • Tap the Wrench (actions menu) in the top left and choose “Share” then you can save your artwork as a JPG or PNG to share on social or email. NOTE: PNGs will be larger files.