Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you how to create your own custom front page of The New York Times in color.
I provided a template, so you can follow along. It includes the newspaper base,
all the necessary fonts, which are already positioned in place for your headline,
secondary headline, date, text for your photo, as well as the shape that your photo will be placed
into, so there's no guesswork. The links to the template and fonts are in my video's description
or project files. Before we begin, if you're not already a subscriber to Blue Lightning TV,
smash that Subscribe button, to let you know as soon as I upload new Photoshop tutorials.
Open a color photo that you'd like to use for this project. I downloaded this one from Shutterstock.
We'll place it onto the template. If your Move Tool isn't active, press "v" on your keyboard
and drag the photo onto the tab of the template. Without releasing your mouse or pen, drag it down
and release. We'll resize and reposition it, but first, open your Channels panel. If you don't see
it, go to Window and Channels. Ctrl or Cmd-click the Alpha 1 thumbnail to select its shape.
Open back your Layers panel and click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask of the selection
next to your photo. Click the chain-link icon to unlink the photo with the layer mask. This
will allow us to resize and reposition the photo while keeping the layer mask exactly where it is.
Make your photo active and open your Transform Tool by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + T.
Go to a corner. If you're using CC 2019 or later, press and hold Alt or Option as you drag it out
or in making sure the photo fills the shape of the layer mask. If you're using a version
earlier than CC 2019, press Alt or Option + Shift as you drag it. Proceed to position and size it,
so it's cropped to your liking. Then press Enter or Return. More than likely, your photo will
have areas brighter than the tone of the paper, which we wouldn't see if it was really printed
on newsprint paper. There's a simple solution - change the photo's Blend Mode to Darken. This
Blend Mode essentially replaces the lightest pixels of the photo with the lightest pixels
of the paper. Any pixels of the photo darker than the lightest pixels of the paper aren't affected.
We'll convert our photo into a Smart Object, so we can add filters to it nondestructively.
To do this, click the icon at the upper, right and click "Convert to Smart Object".
Go to Filter, Noise, and "Add Noise". Make the amount: 15%, Gaussian and Monochromatic.
Go to back to Filter, Pixelate and "Color Halftone". The Maximum Radius is 4 pixels and
keep the Screen Angles at their default amounts of 108, 162, 90, and 45. Double-click the Blending
Options icon next to Color Halftone and change its Blend Mode to Soft Light and its Opacity to 60%.
Since the darkest tones in newspaper printing are never true black, we'll lighten the darkest tones
of our photo. Click the Adjustment Layer icon and click "Brightness/Contrast". Adjustment Layers
always affect all the layers below them in the Layers panel, so if want them to
affect just the one layer below it, we need to clip them or restrict to that one layer.
To do this, click the Clipping Mask icon or you can go to Layer and Create Clipping
Mask. Drag the Contrast slider all the way to the left or you can type in minus 50. Next, we'll add
a texture that replicates the look of uneven ink distribution commonly seen in newspaper printing.
Make a new layer. If your foreground and background colors aren't black
and white respectively, press "D" on your keyboard. Go to Filter, Render and Clouds.
Ctrl or Cmd-click the photo to make a selection of its shape. Click the Layer Mask icon to
make a layer mask of the selection next to the clouds. This confines the clouds to the photo.
Make the clouds active and change its Blend Mode to Soft Light and reduce its opacity to 40%.
Next, we'll reduce the colors' vibrancy a bit. Click the Adjustment Layer icon and click
"Vibrance". In this case, we don't have to clip the adjustment layer, since the layers below our
photo are monochromatic, so they won't be affected. I'll make the Vibrance minus 20,
but feel free to adjust the amount depending on the intensity of the colors in your photo.
Next, we'll replace the text. Double-click the thumbnail of the text layer to open its source.
We have four layers. Starting from the top, we have the day, the date and the year, the headline,
the secondary headline and at the bottom, we have text that describes what's happening in the photo.
After you install the fonts I provided, double-click the large "T" of the Headline layer
to highlight all its text. Click the box at the top, to open the Color Picker. In the hexadecimal
field, type in "1E" three times. This gives us a similar, dark gray color of the masthead. Type in
your text. Double-click the secondary headline to highlight its text and type in new text.
Click the top layer to make it active. Since the point size of this text is so small,
we'll zoom into it by pressing "z" to open your Zoom Tool and dragging it over that text.
Double-click the large "T" of that layer to highlight the text and again,
type in the new day, date, and year. Make the bottom text active and press Ctrl
or Cmd + 0 to fit the page onto your canvas. Open your Zoom Tool and drag it over the bottom text.
Double-click the large "T" to highlight the text and type in anything you'd like to describe the
content of your photo. Then, fit it back onto your canvas. To center all your text,
Shift-click the top layer to highlight all of them and press Ctrl or Cmd + A and open your Move Tool.
Click the Align, Vertical Centers" icon. Then, deselect it.
Close the tab of the text. When you see this message, click "Yes" to save the changes.
We'll blur our text slightly, so their edges blend in better. G o to Filter, Blur and Gaussian Blur.
Blur it zero point five pixels.
Lastly, we'll lighten our entire front page, which gives it a more naturalistic appearance.
Make the Vibrance layer active and click the Adjustment Layer icon.
Click "Levels". In a nutshell, here's how Levels works - The input black and white
levels determine what value is pure black and what value is pure white.
The output black and white levels determine what color and tone should be used for the black point
and white point of the final image. In the Output black field, type in 20. This essentially lightens
the black tone into dark gray. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!