“Breaking Bad” Style Poster – Photoshop CS6 Tutorial

“Breaking Bad” Style Poster – Photoshop CS6 Tutorial

 Written Tutorial Starts:

 

1. Grab Subject & Background

The first thing you will want to do is download the guy with gas mask (who I have already cut off the background) and the background texture we will use. Download: Guy with gas mask » Download: Background Texture »

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

2. Create a New Document

Create a new Photoshop document sized 1440px by 810px.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

3. Place The Background

Go File>Place and place the texture background file that you downloaded from lostandtaken.com and use the anchor handles to stretch the texture to cover the whole document. Hit the “check” icon in the upper toolbar to commit the change to the new size.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

4. Curves Adjustment Layer

Go Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Curves and hit “OK” when the Layer name dialog box pops up. Adjust the Curve line like I have in the screenshot above to really kill off some contrast and prepare the background for the color we will add later on.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

5. Adding Fine Texture

Create a new layer and go Edit>Fill and choose to fill this layer with “50% Gray”. Make sure your foreground and background colors are set to black and white and then go Filter>Noise>Add Noise. Set the amount to 20% and also Gaussian and Monochromatic.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

6. Build Texture

Next go Filter>Stylize>Emboss and set the angle to 115, height of 3px, and an amount of 90%.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

7. Blend It In

Set the blend mode of this layer to “Soft Light” and reduce the layer opacity to 40%. Check out the screenshot to see what I’ve got.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

8. Add The Rough Texture

Duplicate that texture layer we just made by hitting Cmd/Ctrl + J. Go Edit>Transform>Scale and set the “W:” and “H:” in the top toolbar to 200% just as I have in the screenshot above. Hit the check icon to commit the changes and set this layer to 15% opacity.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

9. Lighten The Edge

Create a new layer and then set your foreground color to white. Grab the Gradient tool (G) and choose the “Foreground to Transparent” gradient from the gradient drop down menu. Drag a Linear gradient from the left to the right. You want a gradient that looks like mine.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

10. Blend The Light

Set the white gradient layer to a blend mode of “Overlay” and an opacity of 50%.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

11. Enter The Subject

Go File>Place and find the guy with the gas mask image that you downloaded at the beginning of this tutorial.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

12. Add Contrast With Levels

Go Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels and set the “Input” of the black handle to “45” just as I have. This will increase the contrast of our image overall.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

13. Selective Color Adjustment Layer

Go Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Selective Color and change the “Whites” and “Neutral” as I have in the above screenshots.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

14. Reduce Vibrance

Add a Vibrance adjustment layer and set vibrance to -50 just as I have in the above screenshot.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

15.Boost The Black Levels

Cmd/Ctrl + Click the thumbnail for the “gas-mask” layer to load a selection around our gas mask guy. Create a new Selective Color adjustment layer and set the “Black” level in the “Blacks channel to -10%. Reference the above screenshot for details.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

16. Colorize Part I

Go Layer>New Fill Layer, set the blend mode to “Color and hit “OK”. Set the color to “E2C11E”. Hit “OK” and

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

17. Colorize Part II

Create a second fill layer and set the blend mode to “Soft Light”. Hit “OK” and set this fill layer to a color of “9F8542”

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

18. Add Contrast With Curves

Add a curves adjustment layer with a subtle “S” curve as I have above to add a dash of contrast. Also jump into the Blue channel and pull down on the line a little to pour some yellow into our document.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

19. Merge To New Layer

Hit Cmd/Ctrl + Alt/Opt + Shift + E to merge all of our layers to a new layer. We will use this layer to add some selective focus.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

20. Creating The Selection

Grab the Lasso tool (L) and draw a loose selection around the area of the image that we want to keep sharp.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

21. Feather Selection

Go Select>Modify>Feather and feather our selection by 175px. Go Select>Inverse to flip our selection.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

22. Gently Blur

Because of the way we’ve made our selection, we don’t have quite as much control over our blurring here, but for the purpose of this tutorial, this works just fine. (TIP: Use Quick Masking for more control of your selection) Anyway, go Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and blur this image 2.0 px.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

23. Create A New Selection

We want to really pour some sharpness right into the face area of our gas mask guy. Grab the Lasso tool (L) again and draw a rough selection around the face area and feather this selection 100px. Hit Cmd/Ctrl + J to pop this little bit up to a new layer.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

24. High Pass Sharpening

Desaturate this layer by hitting Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + U and go Filter>Other>High Pass. Set the High Pass filter to 3.0 px.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

25. Intensify Sharpening

Duplicate this face sharpening layer three times by hitting Cmd/Ctrl + J.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

26. Contrast

Create a new Levels adjustment layer. Set the primary black handle to an input of “20”, the gray handle to “1.10”, the primary white handle to “235” and the lower black handle “Output Levels:” to “10”. Check out my screenshot above for the settings.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

27. Create Sign Base

Create a new layer and name it “Sign-Base” and grab your Rectangular Marquee tool (M) and hold your Shift key and drag out a selection about the proper size of our sign. Fill that selection with black.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

28. Create Inner Stroke

Go Edit>Transform and hold your Shift key and rotate the square until it looks more like a diamond. Hit Cmd/Ctrl + J to duplicate this shape and then go Image>Adjustments>Invert to convert our new diamond shape to white. Go Edit>Transform and hold down your Shift + Alt/Opt keys and use the corner anchor handles to scale our shape a little smaller as I have above.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

29. Finishing The Sign Base

Duplicate this white diamond layer and invert the color (Hotkey: Cmd/Ctrl + I) to convert it back to black. Use the transform tool to scale this down just a tiny bit just like I’ve done above.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

30. Add An Icon

Use Photoshop’s Custom Shape Tool (U) and choose out a shape you like. Set your foreground to white and make sure you’re drawing a “Shape” and drag out a little icon for the top of our sign.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

31. Number 4

Grab your Type tool (T) and set the font to Arial. Open the Character panel (Window>Character) and set the font weight to “Black” and set the size to 36pt and set the “Vertical Scale” of the text to “110%”. Check out my screenshot for the exact settings.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

32. Add The Text

Using the Type tool (T) add the words you want to the sign. We are using the Arial font again. Place the text by hitting the little check icon in the top toolbar.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

33. Tweaking The Text

Open your Character panel again and the first thing we want to do is set our “Vertical Scale” back to 100% and also turn on “All Caps”. Next set the “Leading” to 29pt to move our lines of type closer to each other. HIghlight the first line of our text and set it to a font weight of “Normal” to make things look better here.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

34. Dirty The Sign

Select all three “Sign-Base” layers by selecting the top one and shift-clicking to the bottom one. Hit Cmd/Ctrl + G to group these layers into a folder. Set the layer opacity of this group to 85%. Add a layer mask to the group and use some grunge/dirty brushes to “dirty” up the bottom of the sign a little bit.

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

35. You’re Finished!

All that is left to do is show this poster off to all of your friends!

Breaking Bad Style Poster Photoshop Tutorial

 

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