Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you how to recreate a classic retro poster design with your own photos and
text based on Tom Petty s, iconic Full Moon Fever album.
I provided a template including guidelines that we'll use later.
If you don't see the guides, press Ctrl or Cmd H. If you still don't see them, go to
View, Show, and if "Guides" isn't checked, click it.
First, we'll recreate the gradient background from the Tom Petty poster.
Click the lock icon to unlock the background.
Double-click an empty area of the layer to open the Layer Style window.
Click "Gradient Overlay".
The Blend Mode is Normal, the Opacity is 100%, and the Style is Linear.
Make the Angle: 90 degrees and the Scale: 100%.
The Method is "Classic".
Click the gradient bar to open the Gradient Editor.
Click the lower, left Stop.
Click the color box and in the hexadecimal field, type in 418EB8.
Then, click OK or press Enter or Return.
Click below the bar to add a new Stop.
Notice, it's the same color as the first Stop.
For its location, type in 30.
Click to the right of it and for its location, type in 40.
Click the color box and type in D2BD26.
Click to the right of it and type in 65 for its location.
Click the lower, right Stop and type in 75 for its location.
Click the color box and type in BD6285.
We'll close all three windows by pressing Enter or Return three times.
Before we continue, if you want to know as soon as I upload new Photoshop tutorials,
click that Subscribe button and please take a moment to click "Like".
Click the icon at the upper, right corner of the Layers panel and click "Convert to Smart Object".
This allows us to modify our gradient non-destructively.
Open your Rectangular Marquee Tool and make the "Add To" option active.
This adds selections as we make them.
Go to View and if "Snap" isn't checked, click it.
Drag your tool from a top corner of the gradient to the opposite corner of the top guideline.
It'll snap in place because we have "Snap"checked.
Drag another rectangular selection over the bottom two guidelines.
Click the New Layer icon to make a new layer.
Click the foreground color to open the Color Picker and type in 262624.
Press Enter or Return.
We'll fill the selections with the foreground color by pressing Alt or Option + Delete.
Deselect it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd +D. Hide the guidelines by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + H.
Go to View and click "Snap" to disable it.
Open a photo you'd like to use for this project.
It can be color or black and white.
We'll remove the background in the photo by unlocking it and opening the Properties panel.
If you don't see it, go to Window and Properties.
Click "Remove Background".
Photoshop creates a layer mask of our subject which masks out the background.
Convert it into a Smart Object.
Go to Image, Adjustments, and "Posterize".
Make the Levels: 2.
We'll place it onto our gradient background by pressing "v" to open the Move Tool and
dragging the photo onto the tab of the gradient.
Without releasing your mouse or pen, press and hold the Shift key as you drag it down and release.
Pressing Shift kept the photo centered over our document.
Before we resize it, let's reduce its opacity so we can see the background under it.
Open your Transform Tool by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + T. If you see this message, it's
just letting us know that the posterize filter will be temporarily turned off while we use the Transform Tool.
Just click OK.
Go to a corner and press and hold Alt or Option as we drag our photo in or out.
Drag it into position.
You can leave a little room on the sides since it'll be covered later once we add a white
border surrounding the inside perimeter of our poster.
When you're happy with its size and position, press Enter or Return.
Increase its opacity back to 100%.
Ctrl or Cmd-click the thumbnail of the bars to select their shapes.
Click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask of the selections next to the active layer.
Alt or Option-click the eyeball icon next to your subject to hide all the other layers.
Open your Channels panel.
If you don't see it, go to Windows and Channels.
Ctrl or Cmd-click any of the channels to select the shapes of your subject.
Invert the selection by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + Shift + i.
Open back the Layers panel.
Alt or Option-click the eyeball icon to unhide all the other layers.
Click off the eyeball icon next to the subject to hide it and make a new layer above it.
Fill the selection with the foreground color and deselect it.
Let's collapse the Smart Filter to save a bit of space in the Layers panel.
Make a new layer for the text we'll place at the top of our poster.
Invert the foreground an background colors by pressing "x" on your keyboard so we can see our text clearly.
Open your Horizontal Type Tool and Type Picker.
If you want to use the font I'm using, I provided its link as well.
I'll make its size 144 points, but feel free to make it any size you want.
Make its aliasing Smooth and center alignment.
Click on your document.
To reposition it, place your cursor to the left or right of your text and drag it.
Type out your text.
To change the size of a character or a word, highlight it and place your cursor over the text icon.
When your cursor changes into a scrubby slider, click and drag it to the right or left.
I'll highlight another word and type in another size.
I'll reposition my entire line by opening my Move Tool and dragging it down.
To raise or lower any part of your text, press "T" to open back your Type Tool and highlight
the text you want to raise or lower.
Click the Character panel icon or go to Window and Character.
Place your scrubby slider over the baseline shift icon and drag it to the right or left.
To center your text, open back your Move Tool and press Ctrl or Cmd + A to select the entire document.
Click the Align Vertical Centers icon and deselect it.
To raise or lower it, press the Up or Down arrow on your keyboard or press and hold the
Shift key and drag it up or down.
Make sure there's enough space on the top to accommodate the surrounding border that we'll add later.
Ctrl-click or Cmd-click the large "T" of the text layer to select your text's shape. Hide the text layer...
and make the bars layer active.
Press the "Delete" key on your keyboard to delete the area inside the selection. Then, deselect it.
Make your visible subject active and make a new layer above it.
In this layer, we'll add our second line of text.
Follow the same steps as you did for the top text.
For the third line of text, just type it out.
To increase the space between all the characters, known as tracking, highlight the text and
press and hold Alt or Option and the right arrow key on your keyboard.
Drag it into position and click the checkmark at the top.
Then, center it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd +A, opening your Move Tool, and clicking the Align Vertical Centers icon.
We can close the Character panel now.
Make the top text layer active and Shift-click the gradient to make all the layers active.
Convert them into one Smart Object.
Double-click an empty area of the layer to open its Layer Style window.
Click "Stroke".
If the color box isn't white, click it and when the color picker opens, pick white.
Make the size: 1 pixel.
The position is Inside, the Blend Mode is Dissolve, and the Opacity is 25%.
This will give the edges of our poster a slight roughness to them.
Go to Filter, Texture, and Grain.
The Intensity is 15, the Contrast is 0, and the Grain Type us "Enlarged".
This gives our poster a rough texture that was commonly seen in cheap, offset printing.
Convert it into a Smart Object.
Double-click an empty area of the layer to open the Layer Style window and again click "Stroke".
This time, make it size: 25 pixels, the Blend Mode: Normal, and the Opacity: 100%.
Because we added the 1 pixel dissolved border earlier, the edges of our poster has a slight roughness to it.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!