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 »
2. Create a New Document
Create a new Photoshop document sized 1440px by 810px.
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.
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.
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.
6. Build Texture
Next go Filter>Stylize>Emboss and set the angle to 115, height of 3px, and an amount of 90%.
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.
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.
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.
10. Blend The Light
Set the white gradient layer to a blend mode of “Overlay” and an opacity of 50%.
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.
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.
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.
14. Reduce Vibrance
Add a Vibrance adjustment layer and set vibrance to -50 just as I have in the above screenshot.
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.
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
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”
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.
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.
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.
21. Feather Selection
Go Select>Modify>Feather and feather our selection by 175px. Go Select>Inverse to flip our selection.
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.
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.
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.
25. Intensify Sharpening
Duplicate this face sharpening layer three times by hitting Cmd/Ctrl + J.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
35. You’re Finished!
All that is left to do is show this poster off to all of your friends!
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