Experiment with your ripping and, above all, try not to make things look symmetrical. Vary the shapes and sizes and remember to not overdo the threads.
Also, another tool you can use to make the rips is to just use the 'eraser' tool and just erase what clothes you don't want on your model to show up underneath. (I've circled an area here to show what an 'eraser' rip looks like.)
If the eraser has one drawback, it's that it is the opposite of the pen tool, which is to say that all of its edges look as if the clothing is dissolving rather than ripping. You can mitigate this by using the 'sharpen' tool to sharpen the edges, or you can also just use the eraser on some of the sharper edges of a pen rip to break up the smoothness of it.
*AMENDMENT* You can also use the eraser at the one pixel size to make microrips around your big ones to add a more chaotic effect.
Above all, just have fun doing it. Sometimes stuff will look right and other times you will be pulling your hair out. Until next time, have fun and stay safe!
Excellen tutorial! This is what I needed especially for the Tomb Raider: Full Moon TF + BE pic. I tried to make my own rips for this pic but they didn't look good, so I did the clothes ripping in Poser. I might redo the pic using your tutorial, I have the needed pics setup already.
Wow! Cool tutorial. I'm looking forward to trying to do this in Photoshop Elements in the near future. Thanks for all the time and effort setting out the technique. Your clothes ripping renders are really cool!
Thanks a lot! I wish you could really apply this to normal pictures, but it'd require the model to someone stay exactly still... which I don't think is humanly possible. Still, if you figure out how, many many kudos! I was happy to write and hope that it was very informative.