Making patent art is not a difficult task. It is enough to have some basic knowledge of graphic editing software like Photoshop or similar, and to know how to find a patent you’re interested in. In our “Free Patent Drawings” we revealed two ways of searching for certain patent, and now we’re going to cover the making process itself in this patent art tutorial.
First of all find and download patent drawing that you want to edit, for example let’s go with old camera patent from 1887.
Then, you also need an aged paper background. I made the one we are going to use myself, but you can easily find a lot of similar images online.
Search the internet for “vintage paper texture “, and download the one you like. It will be used as background. You can try something like this: old paper. It is a very nice old parchment image from rawpixel which you can use for free.
Open Photoshop and make a new file. Size can vary, but let’s go with 11x14inch, 300dpi , Adobe RGB color profile.
First import your background , the old paper image, and resize it to fit canvas.
Then import patent image and center it (resize if needed). By now you should have something like this.
Change blending mode from patent layer to “Multiply”. Now it’s starting to look all right.
Now you just have to clean the image, and add some contrast. So, make a mask and take your brush. Paint black over areas you want to dissapear, like the black stripe in the lower part of patent image. Also, there are some other minor imperfections. Alternatively, you can rasterize patent layer, and get rid of that parts using “Eraser”.
As the last touch, you can add adjustment curve or levels to “Patent” layer to increase contrast and visibility.
Congratulations, that’s it! Thank you for following our patent art tutorial. You’re now ready to print your new patent art.
You can download images we used for this tutorial from link at the bottom of this page and try it yourself. There is also a finished image which you can print and frame, if you’d like.
Also, check out our “Freebies” page, there you can find and download set of 10 Vintage Paper Textures, which you can use for your personal projects.
In case you’re not into making patent art yourself, feel free to browse our shop for vintage patent art, a place where you can buy digital images and print them at home – affordable, fast, and easy way to create modern art.
In our next article we’ll cover making of blueprints. See you then!