Follow
this step by step design process for my recent digital art work, High
Voltage. The design process involves photo manipulation, creating
patterns, mixing images, textures and blend modes to to create a vintage
and grunge theme.
Learn how a range of Photoshop techniques pull together the various elements to create the final design.
Preview
Step 1
Open up your chosen image in Photoshop. Here I've picked out a nice Pylons near wheat field shot from DepositPhotos.
Make small Levels adjustments to increase the contrast slightly.
If you are planning to use your work for poster printing, use a high DPI (between 150-300dpi) and CMYK Color Mode.
Step 2
Add Curves Adjustment Layer (go to Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Curves) and change the drop down menu to select the Red channel and make adjustments.
Change the drop down to the Green channel and make adjustments to the tones controlled by this channel,
and finally adjust the Blue channel.
Go to Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Gradient Map to add an adjustment layer above all the other layers. Create a gradient going from #270052 to #e78f05, set the Blend Mode to Soft Light, and lower the Opacity of the adjustment layer to 60%.
Step 3
Press Cmd/Ctrl + A to select all, then go to Edit -> Copy Merged and then paste this duplicate on a new layer (Edit -> Paste). Apply Gaussian Blur.
Add a Layer Mask to the blur layer and with large soft brush erase blurring, leaving spots of blurring only on the edges of the photo. This will give nice depth to our photo.
Create new layer (Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + N) and with large soft brush dub couple of red spots (#af2100).
Change the Blend Mode to Linear Dodge (Add) and Opacity to 50%.
Step 4
In this step we are going to add vignette. Cmd/Ctrl+A to select all, create new layer, then go to Edit -> Stroke to add a 100px black stroke inside the document.
Apply Gaussian Blur with maximum Radius of 250px,
and lower the Opacity to 20%.
With soft white brush dub a large spot and change Blend Mode to Soft Light.
Add Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and adjust Hue and Saturation to get faded colors look.
Step 5
Using Ellipse Tool (U) create red circle (#731f0b) and set Blend Mode to Multiply and Opacity to 50%.
Duplicate this layer twice (Cmd/Ctrl + J), move duplicated layers below the original circle layer, and then move duplicated circles one to the right and up a bit, and other to the left and down a bit.
Step 6
Create new document using 10 pixels for the width and 10 pixels for the height, with transparent background. Set the Foreground color to #000000 and with Line Tool (U) draw diagonal line.
3200% zoom
Go to Edit -> Define Pattern. Name the new pattern the way you want it, and you will have a very cool diagonal pattern.
Back to our design. It's time to add some text to our design. Download and install League Gothic font in case you don't have it already and add text.
Open the Layer Style dialog window by double-clicking on the layer, set Fill to 0%, add Pattern Overlay effect using the pattern we created and set Opacity to 85%.
Duplicate text layer and set the Blend Mode to Multiply.
Next duplicate layer again and lower the Opacity to 75%.
Again duplicate our last duplicated layer, lower the Opacity to 55%, and using arrow keys on keyboard move this layer down and left a bit.
Finally duplicate last layer, move it to the right and up few pixels (use arrow keys) and set Opacity of this layer to 35%.
Step 7
This is the last step in the tutorial. We will use texture to give our entire composition the grunge look we are going for.
Import Film Texture into design and resize it fit our canvas,
then set Blend Mode to Soft Light and Opacity to 45%.
