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New Canvas

Open a new canvas, about 200 x 200 pixels, in Photoshop. Set your background color to white, and foreground to a color of your choice.

New Layer

Create a new, transparent layer (Layer, New, Layer) and use the paint bucket to fill this layer with your foreground color by clicking anywhere in the canvas.

Foreground Color

Change your foreground color to white.

Polygonal Lasso

Using the polygonal lasso tool, select a triangle in the lower right-hand corner of the canvas and fill this selection with white using the paint bucket.

Second Triangle

Grab the polygonal lasso tool again and draw a second triangle, extending into the color of your canvas this time. This triangle will be the basis of your page curl.

Paths

Now we get to play with paths. By turning our selection into a path, we’ll be able to get a smooth set of curves out of the straight lines that would be quite impossible any other way. Of course, once you do this you’ll want to use paths all the time – all the more reason to make sure you can get to the paths palette easily. If you don’t see the paths palette grouped with the Layers and Channels tabs, click “Window, Show, Paths”.

Make Work Path

Now that we’re all set, click the Paths tab and immediately click the black arrow in the top right corner (in the image above, it’s the arrow above “Opacity”). From the menu that pops out, choose “Make Work Path”. Set the tolerance to 2.0

Anchor Point Pen

Next, you need to find your “Pen” tool and right-click it. From the menu that pops, select the “Add Anchor Point Pen”. Once you’ve grabbed it, click on any corner of your path and you should see squares appear in each corner.

Manipulate the Path

Now for the fun stuff – we get to manipulate our path by clicking and dragging the anchor points. First, right-click your pen tool once more and choose the “Convert Point” tool. Simply choose your anchor point and drag it inwards.

Make Selection

Now we want to turn it back into a selection, so that we can make it look like a page, right? So click the upper right arrow next to your Paths palette again, this time choosing “Make Selection”. Leave all the options at their default and click OK. Your path should be turned into a normal selection – too easy.

Gradient Tool

We’re nearly done already. To finish off, choose your gradient tool. Set your background color to the color of your page, and set your gradient to “reflected gradient”. Drag the gradient in a diagonal, ending with an image something like this:

Experiment

If it doesn’t quite look right, just click “Edit, Undo” and try again.

Drop Shadow

To top everything off, let’s add a bit of a drop shadow so that the image has some real depth. With the selection made, click “Layer, New, Layer via Copy”. Then look at the bottom of your Layer Palette for the Flash-looking “f” that indicates your Layer Blending Options. Click “Drop Shadow” from the pop-up menu and apply the following settings:

Final Image

And that’s it! You have a beautiful curled-page that can be used in a variety of ways.