This photoshop tutorial will show you how you can create a vector style poster design. Yep, it includes that spiffy “sun ray” element that’s hot right now. So, fire up Photoshop and let’s get started.
The first thing you’ll need to do is get some brushes, and find a good stock picture. Here’s a ZIP file with the brushes you’ll need, as well as the stock picture I used.
Resources
Install the brush files in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS2\Presets\Brushes\Photoshop Only, or wherever your photoshop is installed to.
Step 1
Open a new document in Photoshop, set the dimensions to 500 x 500. Set your foreground and background colors to #12d60d and #22a61b . Create a new laye, and then select the gradient tool (or hit G), then click the gradient preview on gradient toolbar, and set it to Foreground to Background.
On the new layer, click in the middle of the document, then drag (while holding the mouse, and shift) up to the top of the document, then release.
Now, make a new layer, and set the foreground color to #11860b, and click the brush tool. Load Vector 2 by Physical Magic, and select the first brush. Resize it to 700 or so, and click in on the center of the document. Now your design should look like this.
On the “sun ray” layer, set the layer style to this.
Now you are done with the background design.
Step 2
Next, open up the fist stock image included in the zip file. Extract it from the white background. Once you have a layer with just the first on it, go to Image > Adjustments > Threshold. Then enter 160, and hit ok.
Then, go to Filter > Artistic > Cutout, and enter these setting:
- Number of Levels: 8
- Edge Simplicity: 2
- Edge Fidelity: 2
Now, when you extracted the first, depending on what method you used, you might have some little white pixels randomly in the image. To get rid of these, use the lasso tool / polygon lasso tool to select the first. Give it some padding when you select it, so that you aren’t exactly on the first. Then just right click, select inverse, and hit delete. Now you have a clean extraction, that looks like this.
Step 3
Ok, drag the first layer onto the original document, and resize it to 60-70%, and center it. Now, add this layer style (the stroke is 10px, white; the colors for the gradient are #dcb48a to #dd8e4d.)
Step 4
Make a new layer under the fist layer. Grab the brush tool (or hit B), and then select BRUSHES_01_02, or load the brush set if you haven’t already. Grab a few of the brushes, resize them to around 500, and click in the center of the image. Here’s what I got:
Step 5
Now for the last step. Go to Google, and image search “family crest” or “coat of arms,” and limit the results to just high resolution. Then find an image with a banner that you like, and copy it into photoshop. Loosely cut out the banner, and clone or copy out the text on it, replacing it with your own in whatever font you like. Add a drop shadow to the banner layer, and whatever font styling you want. Here’s what mine looks like:
