Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. I'm going to show you how to create a simple,
but striking portrait and make it into a poster from an ordinary photo. This effect is fully
customizable to create a variety of different looks.
Open a photo of a person that you'd like to use for your poster. I downloaded this one
and the photo from Shutterstock.com. Its size is 1000 x 1286 pixels with a resolution of
150 pixels per inch. The first step is to convert your photo into a Smart Object, so
we can modify it non-destructively. It'll also allow us to replace the photo without
having to redo all the effects. To do this,
click the icon at the upper, right of the
Layers panel and click "Convert to Smart Object".
Make a copy of it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J.
Go to Filter, Blur and Gaussian Blur.
I'll blur it 9 pixels. Depending on the size
and resolution of your photo, choose an amount that blurs your photo approximately this much.
Then, click OK.
Click the white layer mask of the Smart Filter to make it active. We're
going to brush black in the layer mask to reveal the original, focused photo under it
in the Layers panel. If your foreground and background colors aren't black and white respectively,
press "D" on your keyboard.
Open your Brush Tool
and choose a large brush size and a Hardness
of 0%. Then, press Enter or Return.
Make its opacity 50%.
Press the F5 key at the top of your keyboard to open your
Brush Preset panel. Make sure the only setting that's checked is "Smoothing".
Press F5 again to close the panel.
Brush once over the eyes, nose and mouth of your subject to reveal the
focused photo in the Layers panel. For this example, let's remove some of the color. Click
on the Adjustment layer icon and choose Hue/Saturation.
Reduce the Saturation to minus 40.
Click the Adjustment layer icon again and this time, choose Levels.
Slide the Output black level to the right
to lighten your entire image.
Next, we'll add a dark, vignette frame surrounding the outer edge.
Click the New Layer icon to make a new layer. Fill the empty layer with
any color. I'll press Alt or Option + Delete to fill it with the foreground color. Reduce
the Fill to 0%. This makes whatever is inside the layer itself invisible, but any effects
that we'll be adding to it will be visible. Double-click on its thumbnail to open its
Layer Style window. Click "Inner Glow". Make the Blend Mode: Normal and the Opacity: 100%.
Click the color box and pick black.
I'll make the Size: 90 pixels. Again, depending on the
size and resolution of your photo, you may want to adjust this amount.
Next, we'll add text to complete the poster.
Open your Horizontal Type Tool and go to Window
and Character. The Character panel will open. Choose a font. I'll use "Myriad Pro Regular"
which I also provided its link to. For this font, I'll make its Size: 20 points. Click
in the center near the top of your document and make sure the "Center Alignment" icon
is highlighted. Type out your first two lines of text. To adjust the line spacing, highlight
both lines and slide the "Leading" icon to the right or left.
For this example, I set the leading to 83 points.
To adjust the space between characters, slide the "Tracking" icon
to the right or left.
I'll set the Tracking at 1850.
Click to the right of the lower line,
press Enter or Return and type the rest of text.
I'd like to change the size and font
of the first two lines of text, so I'll highlight them,
change their size to 25 points
and the font to "Myriad Pro Bold".
To center your block of text on your document,
click your Move Tool and press Ctrl or Cmd + A to select it all.
Click the "Align Horizontal Centers" icon
and the "Align Vertical Centers" icon.
Then, deselect it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + D.
Let’s close the Character panel now.
Next, I'll show you how to replace the photo
with another, adjust its color and edit the text. In the Layers panel, scroll to the bottom
and double-click the thumbnail of the Smart Object. This opens the Smart Object's source.
Open another photo that you'd like to use for your poster. Drag it up onto the Smart
Object's .psb tab and without releasing your mouse or pen, drag it down onto your image
and release. To resize and position the new photo, press Ctrl or Cmd + T to open your
Transform Tool. To see the entire bounding box of the Transform, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0.
Drag it to the center. To resize it, go to a corner and when you see a diagonal, double-arrow,
press Alt or Option + Shift as you drag it in or out. Continue until you're happy with
its size and position. Then, press Enter or Return.
Click the small "x" on the Smart Object
tab to close it. When you see this warning, click "Yes" to save the changes.
As soon as you open back up your poster document,
you'll see that the poster has been updated with your new photo with all the effects.
Click the layer mask to make it active. Because the area that we brushed in earlier was specifically
for the other photo, we need to redo it for this photo. To do this, press Ctrl or Cmd
+ Delete to fill it with white.
Open your Brush Tool and brush once over the eyes, nose
and mouth. If you want to edit your text, scroll to the top and click the large "T"
to make the text layer active. Press "T" on your keyboard to open the Type Tool and highlight
the lines you want to edit. Now, type your new text.
I'd like to increase the color saturation of the photo,
so I'll click the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer
and slide the Saturation all the way to the right.
I'd also like to lighten it, so I'll make the
Levels adjustment layer active and slide the Output black level to the right.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!