So...it's been a while.  I have been very busy with my design work lately and although I'm thankful for that it also sucks that I haven't been able to post more so today I am giving you a little walkthrough of how I created this nice looking clipboard in Photoshop.

Here is a preview of the final result:

It's more a walkthrough of my process than a tutorial so I apologize if anything is confusing or left out.  I'd rather show you how I did something and let you use the knowledge to create something more original than simply have you copy word for word what I did.

The first step obviously is to open a new file.  In my case I chose the resolution 612x792, don't ask me why because I don't remember.  Fill in the background layer with a color of your choice.  I recommend something not too saturated and neutral in value.

I created new layer and drew a rounded rectangle in the overall shape of the clipboard body.

Play with the blending options to give it some texture, 3-dimensionality, and shadow.  I used the settings below.

This gave me the following:

I wanted better highlights so I duplicated the clipboard layed, cleared the layer effects, and set the layer fill to 0%.  Then I applied a stroke and with the following settings.

The next step was the dirty it up a bit.  I made a couple new layers and used some grunge brushes I found a long time ago to make it look more used and abused.  I used one layer with the layer mode set to multiply for the dark splotches and one layer with the mode set to screen for the light grunge effects.  You can see the result below both by itself and on top of the clipboard.

Next I found an image of a real clipboard on stock.xchng to steal the clip itself.

After I used the pen tool to cut it out, I copied it over and placed it accordingly.  Then I applied a dropshadow with the following settings to give it more depth.

This is where I was at after that.

I created a layer between the clip and the board and manually painted in some shadows to add realistic depth to the image.  I think it came out pretty well.

Using these same techniques I created some layers for the paper between the clip and the board.  It's almost done!

The final step was to add some texture to the background and on top of the final image.  I created 2 layers above all the rest.  One with the gradient below set to Overlay at 15% transparency.

The other I filled with black and used the filter Pixelate>Mezzotint>Fine dots to create noise.

Then I set it to multiply at 3% opacity to give the overall image a more photographic quality.

The final result can be seen below.

I hope you learned something from this walkthrough.  What was the most helpful?  What was the least helpful?  What kinds of walkthrough would you like to see next?