How To Plastic Wrap Your Candy With Photoshop And Illustrator

In this tutorial, I will touch on the Photoshop filter - Plastic Wrap. The Plastic Wrap filter is one of the most useful special effects tool Photoshop has to offer. Use it to make create beads of sweat on an athlete, to just about anything that dribbles.  Oh, and if you really want to, you can use it to draw shiny dripping paint on the can. In this work through, we're going to use this technique to create a plastic wrap on a candy.

Final Plastic Wrap on a Candy

Step 1. Create the Candy

You may prepare a solid colour background or the one similar to the bottom.
Create a circle in any colour.

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Right click > Layer Properties > Inner Shadow. Adjust to the settings below.

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Add a Gradient Overlay, adjust to the settings like below.

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Click OK, and you will have something similar to this.

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Step 2. Create swirl in Illustrator

Open Illustrator, use the Pen tool and draw a rectangle like the one below. We will be using this shape as an Art Brush.

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Now CLICK and DRAG the rectangle into the Brush Panel. You will be prompted by a pop up box. Choose New Art Brush and click OK. Choose the direction of the brush and click OK.

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Now use the Spiral Tool, create a spiral.

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Select the spiral, and click on the Art Brush which you have just created.

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Step 3. Combining Swirl and Candy in Photoshop

Copy and paste the swirl as a smart object back in Photoshop. Add a mask, so that the swirl fits nicely on top of the candy.

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Right click > Layer Properties. Add an Inner Glow and Gradient Overlay to achieve similar to the bottom.

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Step 4. Adding Subtle Texture

Add in reflections. Draw 2 circles and 1 cresent. Bring down their opacity. You will get this.

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We are now going to add in a subtle texture to the lolly. Add a new layer,  Go to Filter > Render > Clouds. Then go to Noise > Add Noise and adjust to the settings below. Change the blending mode to Overlay.

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Step 5. Adding the Candy stick and Plastic Wrap

Draw a thin rectangle and add a gradient overlay to it.

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Give a slight warp to the candy so that it looks more natural.

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Using the pen tool, draw the wrapper and fill it in grey.

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Use the Dodge and Burn Tool and create highlights to the wrapper.

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Go to Filter > Artistic > Plastic Wrap

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Change the blend mode to Screen and bring down its opacity. Duplicate the layer and change blend mode to Overlay. Play around with the opacity levels to achieve the below.

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Step 6. Final Touches and Details

Set the brush tool to a light brownish colour to paint the string. To add in more depth, use a darker brown and paint over the edges.
Add in a Drop shadow so that it looks more realistic.

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Shadows were added around the edges of the plastic sheet, to make it more three dimensional. Finally, for some final touches, I added in some sparkles. Hope you enjoyed this tutorial!
Candy in Plastic Wrap

Plastic Wrap Hot Tip:

Performing a filter such as Plastic Wrap will change the look of the base layer completely. Thus, always duplicate a copy of that layer before applying the filter to it, so that you can make changes if you need later.

About this Author

Charlotte

Charlotte’s interest is in web interface and design as well as motion graphics. Her absorption with her work is mostly due to her attention to detail and passion for the world of design. Winding down after work, which consumes much of her time; she enjoys travelling, exploring new places, gastronomy, and fashion.

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12 Comments on “How To Plastic Wrap Your Candy With Photoshop And Illustrator”

  1. huwaw69 May 22, 2009 at 9:06 pm

    quite a hard image to make... but really great tutorial...

  2. Charlotte May 22, 2009 at 9:49 pm

    thanks! you have some great stuff on your site as well.

  3. plastic tooling November 24, 2009 at 10:04 am

    Thank you! Provide such good mould case

  4. chani February 24, 2010 at 3:26 pm

    I followed your tutorial easily until I got to the plastic wrap step. Photoshop won't let me access any of the artistic filters and I don't know why. PS' help doesn't offer any clues. I tried rasterizing the wrapper shape, which is a smart object, but it still doesn't work. I am using PS CS3.

    Can you please help me?

  5. Mano Yertanian March 1, 2010 at 6:31 pm

    Hi there,

    very interesting tutorial... since I do design from 1992 I haven't use such thing.. well done Charlotte..

    I am interested to getting to know you better, do you and have you attend HOW design conference ???

    please feel free to email me, I'd like to keep in touch with you.

    cheers
    Mano

  6. Charlotte March 1, 2010 at 10:32 pm

    Hi Mano, thanks for the comment!

    I've not attended the HOW conference before unfortunately. Would really love to attend. Have you?

  7. Rose March 2, 2010 at 2:11 am

    heya. Im having a problem with the spiral and the paintbrush in illustrator.

    I make the paintbrush just like it says, and the spiral, but when I select the spiral and click on the brush i made, it goes wrong!

    instead of the colour with a wide base and narrowing down, and with the spiral "blue line" in the middle, mine has the black INSIDE the spiral, and after the first loop, the rest of the spiral is all black. At the base of the spiral is a small version of the triangle (from the brush) pointing out....

    Please help???

    • Charlotte March 2, 2010 at 2:15 am

      Hey Rose, did you fully close the rectangle points when you create it?

      • Rose March 2, 2010 at 3:07 am

        i have no idea, i redid it, and the forth or fifth time it worked... but i dont know what i did!! >_< lol.

        except now when i copy and paste it over its too big, i resize it, but masks dont work?? what kind of mask am i meant to make?

        Thank you loads! :)

    • Charlotte March 2, 2010 at 2:22 am

      Also check that the direction of the brush is towards the right at the Art Brush Options window.

  8. Rose March 2, 2010 at 3:12 am

    just to add on, i am using CS2, will that cause big differences?

    • Charlotte March 2, 2010 at 12:37 pm

      great that it works! Yes it works on CS2 too ;)

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