I love brightly coloured digital paper, but if you prefer pastel colours, there’s a quick and easy way to make any digital paper you have into lighter, pastel colours.

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How to make a digital paper into pastel colours

If you don’t have Photoshop, you can purchase and download it here (my affiliate link).

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The pattern used in the tutorial is from this digital paper set from my second Etsy shop, PaperCravings

Import the digital paper into Photoshop

Locate where you’ve saved the digital paper on your computer, left click, drag and drop to place in Photoshop.

I shared some free stripe digital paper in this post if you want to try out this tutorial.

2. Add a rectangle

Go to the shape menu, right click and select ‘rectangle’ Now draw a rectangle that is larger than the template (i.e. left click with your mouse in the greyed out area off the edge of the pattern, and drag your mouse so that the shape covers the pattern completely.

3. Change the fill color of the shape to white

You want to make the shape white as, much like when painting, adding white to anything will make the colors lighter.

4. Change the opacity

Change the opacity to whatever % you like. The higher the %, the more pastel the digital paper will be.

You can find the opacity option above the layers menu.

I tend to use no higher than 50% as the paper starts to looks a bit washed out and the pattern isn’t as easy to see.

5. Press enter

When you’re happy with how pastel the digital paper is, press the ‘enter’ key on your keyboard.

Now you have a pastel digital paper!

6. Saving the file

To save the file go to File > Save As

Change the file format from PSD (Photoshop file format) to JPG.

Important: Make sure you add an additional letter (I use P for Pastel) to the file name as otherwise you will over-ride the original digital paper.

If you need to make a lot of digital papers into pastel colors, bring them all into Photoshop at once (press CTRL to select multiple images in a folder, then left drag and drop into Photoshop). Then use the eye icon on the left of each in the layers menu to turn the layers off and on, saving each as you go with a new file name.