Design a Grunge Vintage Poster in Photoshop

In this Photoshop tutorial I’m going to explain how to easily create a vintage poster design. We will use some useful techniques related to patterns and visual organization with Photoshop guides. Also we will play with a texture to give an old look to the composition and will deal with adjustment layers for final touches.

Preview:

For Mac users:

• Ctrl = cmd
• Alt = Option

Step 1

Create a new A4 document in Photoshop.

Step 2

Grab the Paint Bucket tool (G), set a light-desaturated yellow (#f4e0a9) as foreground color, and fill the background layer.

Step 3

Download this image of a frozen landscape and paste it into the Photoshop canvas (File>Open and select the image).

Step 4

At this point we have to create the spots that will be used later to mask some areas of the landscape. Instead of creating a first spot and then duplicate it again and again (so boring!) we will create a pattern.

Before starting with the pattern, we need to make order using Photoshop guides. Place 4 guides at the same distance – 200 px – from each side of the canvas. Then drag other 4 guides, this time with a distance of 100 px from the edges. These guides will be useful when we will define the area covered by the pattern. Also by creating order you can focus the attention on the most important areas of the composition and easily create symmetrical artworks.

How to create guides? You can create a guide by clicking and dragging from the ruler. If you want to hide guides go to View>Show>Guides.

Step 5

Create a new 150×150 pixels document in Photoshop with a transparent background. Grab the Ellipse tool and create a circle. Place it in the center of the canvas. Now go to Edit>Define pattern and save the new pattern.

How to create perfect circles with the Ellipse tool? Simply hold down Shift while drawing the circle

How to align something with the center of the canvas? Press ctrl+A to select the entire canvas. Then use the align tool (in the option bar – on top) to align the object.

Step 6

Switch to the main Photoshop canvas. Here create a new layer, grab the Rectangular Marquee tool and select the center area or the canvas. You can notice I created another guide at 2500 pixels height.

Step 7

Go to Edit>Fill and select the pattern just created:

Step 8

With the Rectangular Marquee Tool select the incomplete spots and press delete to eliminate them. Finally Align the spots with canvas:

Step 9

Now we will use layer masks to filter the landscape through the spots. Ctrl+click on the layer thumbnail of the spots to select its pixels. Then hide the visibility of spots’ layer:

Step 10

Select the layer of the frozen landscape from the layers window, and press the “add layer mask button” at the bottom of the window. This is what you should obtain:

Note: Do you are a newbie who never used masks before? Check out our tutorial for Photoshop beginners on how to use layer masks.

Step 11

With the mask layer of the landscape still selected, grab the marquee tool and select 5×5 spots in the center (to create a square). Fill the selection with black in order to eliminate it, and press ctrl+D to deselect

Step 12

Create a circle inside the empty space in the center (guides can help you to be precise)

Step 13

As we made with the small circles, repeat the same process with this larger one. Ctrl+click on its layer thumbnail (always in the layers window) to select its pixels, and hide its layer visibility:

Step 14

Select the mask of the landscape layer (not the layer, but the mask. Make attention), and fill the selection with white (#FFFFFF). In this way you will reveal the landscape area which is below the circle:

Step 15

With the mask still selected, grab a grunge brush and, with black as foreground color, paint over the spots:

Step 16

The image of the landscape looks too much realistic and flat. Select it and press ctrl+U to open the Hue/Saturation window. Here check “colorize” and enter the following settings:

Step 17

Let’s add some type. I’ve used 3 font: Helvetica for the 3, Musa for WeGraphics andBallpark for “best design resources”. To give a grunge look to the text too, grab the eraser tool and use a grunge brush to erase a little bit the edges.

Step 18

At this point we need a texture to add the old style to our composition. I’ve used the page of an old book, wrinkled it, and scanned at 300 dpi.

Premium members will find the texture into the source file.

Step 19

Open the texture in Photoshop and drag it into the main canvas. Here set the layer blending mode to multiply with opacity 40%.

Step 20

With the guides visible, make a selection of the borders, create a new layer and fill the selection with brown (#682e01):

Step 21

Switch the layer blending mode to color burn and reduce opacity to 20%. Also use grunge brushes (reduce a lot brushes size) to give a grunge look to the borders too:

Step 22

It’s time for the last color corrections: go to Layer>New adjustment layer>Hue/Saturation and reduce saturation to -60

Step 23

Add a second adjustment layer, but this time select “gradient map”. Set a gradient going from brown (#642100) to yellow (#f9e600). Switch the layer to overlay with opacity 50%. We’ve finished!

And here is the final result!

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