Drawing a Vista Style Folded Tip Icon
By Dr Diablo | Photoshop CS3 | BeginnerThis tutorial is going to teach you how to draw the popular folded tip file icon found all over Windows Vista. We will be creating this icon as a vector shape in Photoshop, so we are going to be using the Pen Tool to draw all the necessary shapes and then add Styles to them using the layer's Blending Options. Our final results will look like the sample picture below:
Drawing the Icon's Body
Start off by creating a new 200x250 document in Photoshop with the following parameters.
Select the Pen Tool 
and make sure that the Shape Layers from the Properties Panel on the top is activated.
Using the Pen Tool , draw a normal rectangle with a semi round edge at the top right edge exactly as shown in the screenshot below.
Right Click on the Vector Shape Layer from the Layers Panel and select Blending Options to open up the window for those options.
From the Blending Options window, apply a Drop Shadow, Outer Glow, Gradient Overlay and Stroke with the properties shown in the screenshots below.
After applying all of those styles, your icon is going to look something like this.
Drawing the Folded Edge
To get the folded part's shading right, we need to create another vector shape with different Styles applied to it to achieve our desired results. If this was not the case, using the Wrap transformation tool would have solved the problem. Using the Pen Tool again, draw a shape identical to the one shown below on the top right corner of the folder drawing.
Right Click on the Vector Shape Layer and select Blending Options. Apply a Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Gradient Overlay and Stroke with the following properties as shown in the screenshots below.
After you finish applying the styles, your folded tip will go along with the icon's body and it should look something like this.
Your Vista Style Folded Tip Icon is now complete. Like Windows Vista, you can add any symbol or logo to the file icon you just designed to identify it. In the sample below, I have used Oman3D's logo and added a small Overlayed white fill on the edge of the logo to act as gloss.
This concludes our tutorial, you can check my source PSD here. I advise you to experiment with this logo by applying your own touch of style to it, and make sure you show off your work in the Graphics Showcase forum. I hope that you've learnt something new from my tutorial, feel free to email me on diablo@oman3d.com if you have any comments or questions or alternatively post in the Oman3D Forum to get instant feedback.
- End of Tutorial