Cut/tear out paper shape using plain white paper, scan in on black background.

Note that unsharp mask in the scanning software is *crucial* for this process
to work correctly, since it creates strong black and white halos along the
edge of the paper.  This is great, because we are going to fill the center
with solid white, and fill the background with solid black.  These fills
will "mate" with the black and white halos nicely.

Clean up black and white areas of scan to remove noise.  Paper texture
is not important at this stage, though detail along the edge is.  We're
essentially making a black and white mask.

One way to speed up this process is to use the Select By Color tool with
an appropriate threshold value to select pretty much all of the black pixels.
Turn AA off on this tool.

For black construction paper, a threshold of 60 seems to work well to select
most black pixels.

After selecting almost all of the black pixesl, shrink the selection by 1 pixel
to make sure plenty of "fuzzy edge" on the torn paper is preservered.

In a new layer, fill this selection with black.

Repeat a similar process by using Select By Color with a threshold to select
most of the white pixels.  Since there may be more noise in the white, and
we don't want to use the same shrink trick afterward, you can also add a big
centeral rectangle to the selection.

Seems like a threshold of 25 works well for the white.

Don't use the shrink-by-one-pixel trick here, because we want to fill with
solid white pretty much right up to the edge of where the paper stops.

In a new layer, fill the selection with white.  Then inspect it for any "holes"
near the edge (where there's a dark spot near the edge that shouldn't be there).

Since we're using this as a mask, any dark spots inland in the paper will be
transparent holes in the paper.  But dark spots right at the edge are good,
because they make the torn, "hairy" edge of the paper.

Once both black and white layers are done, enable all three layers.  You should
see what looks like a solid white paper ona solid black background, but with
a very natural-looking torn edge.

Copy visible, to get a mask image.

Use this mask to select a paper-texture region from hintPaperBaseTexture.xcf

This is the correct color and texture for paper slips in the game.

Use this same mask to select a region from a solid black area.  Blur this
black shape to make a drop shadow


For smaller elements, like YUM slips:

Drop shadows are Gaussian Blur, radius 7, with layer opacity 66.7%



For larger elements, like hint sheets:

Drop shadows are Gaussian Blur, radius 13, with layer opacity 85%
