Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. I'm going to show you how to design and create
this custom, portrait poster of your favorite music artist including his or her lyrics from your favorite songs.
Open a photo of the person you'd like to use for your poster. It can be be color or black and white.
If it's color, desaturate it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + Shift +U.
Adjust it's brightness and contrast by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + Shift + L. We want
to make a selection around the subject's head to ultimately cut it out from its background.
There are many ways to make selections, however, for this example, I'll use the Quick Selection
Tool. I'll make the Size: 30 pixels, however, you may need to adjust this amount depending
on the size and resolution of your image. Drag your cursor over your subject to select
it. If there are areas that you want to remove, press and hold Alt or Option as you drag over
those areas. Click the Refine Edge button or go to Select and "Refine Edge".
I did an in-depth tutorial on Refine Edge,
so if you're not familiar with it, you should watch that tutorial. It's link is in the video's description.
Check "Smart Radius"
and make the brush size large enough to cover the edges of the hair.
If you want to make your bush bigger or smaller,
press the right or left bracket keys on your keyboard.
Output it to a "New Layer". Then, click OK.
Notice, your subject is now on its own layer without the background. Next, we'll
create a new document for the poster, itself. Press Ctrl or Cmd + N. I'll make the Width
and the Height 12 inches and the Resolution: 150 pixels per inch, however, you can make
yours whatever size you'd like. The Color Mode is RGB at 8 bits per channel. Name your
poster and click OK or press Enter or Return.
Click the tab of your subject and press "v" to open your Move Tool.
Drag it onto the tab of your poster document and without releasing
your computer mouse or pen, drag it down and release. To resize and position it, open your Transform
Tool by pressing Ctrl or Ctrl + T. To see the Transform's entire bounding box, press
Ctrl or Cmd + 0. Go to a corner and when you see a diagonal, double-arrow, press and hold
Shift as you drag it out or in. To reposition it, go inside the Transform and drag it. Keep
in mind, you can always reposition it later if you want. I'll position it to the left
to make room for his name on the right. To accept it, press Enter or Return or click
the checkmark at the top. To fit it back on your canvas, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0.
Go to Image, Adjustments and "Threshold".
I'll leave the Threshold Level at its default amount of 128, but feel free to adjust it if you like.
Then, click OK.
Next, we'll add your subject's name.
Open your "Vertical Type Tool" and choose a font. For my poster, I'll use
"Baby Teeth Regular". If you want to use it, as well, its link is my video's description.
I'll temporarily make its size 140 points, "None" for the anti-alias, top alignment and
black for its color. Click near the top, right corner and type out the name.
Click your Move Tool
and open your Transform Tool to resize and position your text.
Then, press Enter or Return.
We'll merge the name and the portrait by Shift-clicking on the portrait to highlight
it. Now that both layers are highlighted, press Ctrl or Cmd + E. Click the eyeball next
to the top layer to temporarily hide it. Next, we'll add lyrics. Open your "Horizontal Type
Tool" and choose a font. I'm using "Arial Regular". I'll make the size: 8 points, but
again, you may want to use another point size depending on the size and resolution of your
document. Click Left Alignment and go to Window and Character. The Character panel will open.
Make sure the Vertical and Horizontal scaling is 100% and the Baseline Shift is 0 points.
Open your Browser and go to the website: www.azlyrics.com.
In the "Search" field, type in the name of the artist.
Click on one of the "Album results" and a new page will open will a list of music
tracks from various albums by the artist. Click on a song you like and a new page will
open will the lyrics from that song. Highlight the lyrics and press Ctrl or Cmd + C to copy
them. Close the window and hide the Browser. Click near the top, left corner of your document
and press Ctrl or Cmd + V to paste the lyrics. If the lines are too tightly packed or too
far apart, highlight all the text and slide the "Leading" icon to the right or left to
adjust the spacing. I'll type in 10 points for the Leading. Open your Move Tool to reposition
your text. Don't be concerned if your text looks too light; we'll take take of that later.
Open your Browser again and click on another song that you like. As before, the lyrics
will open in a new window. Highlight the lyrics, copy them, close the window and hide the Browser.
Open your Horizontal Type Tool, click on your document and paste in the lyrics. As before,
open your Move Tool to reposition your text. Repeat these steps until your entire document
is filled with lyrics. Feel free to place them wherever you'd like. A quick way to reposition
each song on your document is to check "Auto Select". Now, when you click on a song lyric,
it automatically activates the corresponding layer in the Layers panel, so you can reposition
the lyric without having to go each time to the Layers panel to make a song lyric active.
Next, we'll merge all the lyrics into one layer. Scroll to the top of the Layers panel
and make your top text layer active. Scroll to the bottom text layer and Shift-click on
it to highlight all of them. Press Ctrl or Cmd + E to merge them. Ctrl-click or Cmd-click
on its thumbnail to make a selection of your text. We'll fill the selection with black
to strengthen the text. Press Shift + the F5 key at the top of your keyboard to open
the Fill window. Click "Black". Then click OK. Click on the name, press Ctrl or Cmd +
A to select it and type in, "Black Text". Click the New Layer icon to make a new layer.
We'll name it "White Text. In this empty layer, we'll fill the selection with white, but first,
drag it below your black text and make the layer with the portrait, visible.
With the white text layer still active,
open the Fill window again and this time, click "White".
Then, press Ctrl or Cmd + D to deselect it.
Right now, your black text is literally on top of your white text, which makes it
difficult to see, but we'll take care of that in a minute. Go to the eyeball next to your
portrait and Alt-click or Option-click on it.
This will hide all the other layers, making this, the only layer visible.
Go to Select and "Color Range".
Select, "Shadows" and click OK. .
Make the black text visible and active.
Click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask of the selection next to the black text.
Invert the layer mask by pressing Ctrl or Cmd +I.
Essentially, The white areas of the layer mask is revealing the black text, while
the black areas of the layer mask is masking out or hiding the black text. Make the white
background visible and the white text layer visible.
Next, we'll give the lyrics a gradient color.
Click the New Layer icon to make a new layer. Make its Blend Mode: Color.
Open your Gradient Tool and Gradient Picker.
I'll click the Spectrum gradient, but feel free
to experiment with the other gradients, as well. You'll see many more Gradient presets
when you click this gear icon. I'll click the "Angle" gradient, but you can play with
the other gradient styles, as well. For this example, I'll click on the center of his eye
and press and hold "Shift" as I drag across the gradient line to the right edge of the
poster. Next, we'll add an aged, paper texture. Open the paper texture I provided. Its link
is located in my video's description or project files. To place it into your poster, press
Ctrl or Cmd + A to select it and Ctrl or Cmd + C to copy it. Open your poster document
and press Ctrl or Cmd + V to paste the paper texture into it. If you need to adjust its
size or shape, you can use your Transform Tool. Change its Blend Mode to "Multiply".
Double-click on an empty area of the layer to open its Layer Style window. Click "Inner
Glow" and the color box. Pick black and click OK. Change the Blend Mode to "Vivid Light"
and make the Opacity: 80%. Make the Size: 75 pixels and click OK.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!