Grunge is not only a big style for websites, simple graphics, and signatures, but lots of other designers use it in works like posters for concerts, cd covers, music videos, etc. In this tutorial, I will show you some simple ways to turn a picture into a grunge themed poster. There are not too many photoshop poster tutorials out there, so I intend to make this one something helpful for you! We will be turning this:
Into this:
While working with grunge, we want to keep the following things in mind. Grunge is not organized, and therefore, you should never try to center, or align something unless you are going for a special look. Grunge is not minimalistic, meaning that you can usually overdue something in grunge and still get a good effect. Grunge is dirty, never use straight lines, perfect circles, or smooth objects. The more torn up something looks, the more grungy it is. And Lastly, Grunge is usually dark, almost gothic. Although not all grunge is dark, most grunge does overuse the color black, as we will today. Instructions:
1. Open a picture of your choice into Photoshop. In this case, we are going to use this picture, but you can use whatever you would like:
2. First thing we need to do is make our poster darker. To do this, create a new layer over the picture, and fill it with black. Set this layers blending mode to overlay, and turn down the opacity until you are content with the darkness level (60% on mine):
3. Remember, grunge is not organized, so go ahead and take your eraser tool, and make some marks on your black layer. If you would like, you can download my grunge brush set from GreyCobra.com in the Downloads section under Photoshop resources:
4. Create a new layer and select a black grunge brush. Start filling in empty spaces with brushings [TIP: Try to make the outside edges dark, including corners. Don't cover do much of your image!]:
5. Now we are going to add a tear in the image. This is not like a paper tear that needs to look realistic, but it will look good once complete. Drag a rectangle with your selection tool, and fill it with black in a new layer.
6.Add a new layer above this, and select your black brush tool again. Using different grunge brushes, stroke around the box until you can see any straight edges.
7. Continue to brush along the border of the image, to make it appear as if both sides are torn:
8. Now we need to add some text. You can either use a pre made font that you have downloaded somewhere, or you can use a normal font and edit it to make it look grungy. Use a white text, and fill the large tear with some text. Afterwards, apply a white outer glow on it:
9. Add some more text around the rest of the image. I made my poster appear like it was for a concert and I included a date. You can do whatever you would like. After you write some text, go to edit > transform > Rotate. Your text will become selected. Now hold the shift key, and hold a corner to drag around. Once at a 45* angle, let go. Add some effects to the blending options like an outer glow and drop shadow:
10. Add some more text, and set the blending mode to soft light. You text should still be black. Rotate this text as well and put it somewhere over the image. This should not be grungy text, I used a handwriting text with lyrics.
11. Now add a new color balance adjustment layer (Layer > New adjustment layer > Color balance), and set it up as I have:
12. Thats it! You can play around with the color balance until you get good results, these are just the settings I used. Good luck!
I hope that this tutorial has helped you learn more about the art of grunge!
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