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ByJames Qu
April 5, 2009

Create a Pop Art Style Poster with Urban City Background in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the process I used to create this Pop Art Style Poster with urban city background in Photoshop by using a combination of Photoshop Filter effects. Again this effect is discovered by accident and I thought I can share it with you guys :) Along the way, we will be using a lot of filter effects, masking technique, layer blending options, a number of selection techniques including the use of edge refining and magic wand. The steps are quite simple for this tutorial even for beginners, however the end result looks good in my opinion. Have a try!

In this Photoshop tutorial, I will show you the process I used to create this Pop Art Style Poster with urban city background in Photoshop by using a combination of Photoshop Filter effects. Again this effect is discovered by accident and I thought I can share it with you guys :)

Along the way, we will be using a lot of filter effects,  masking technique, layer blending options, a number of selection techniques including the use of edge refining and magic wand. The steps are quite simple for this tutorial, however the end result looks good in my opinion.  Have a try!

Here is a preview of my final image for this tutorial:

pop-art-urban-poster-final-3

Black and White version:

pop-art-urban-poster-final-4

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Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Firstly let’s download this wonderful model image and load it into Photoshop. Duplicate the background layer once and go to Filter > Artistic > Cutout and apply the following settings:

1-cutout

Name this duplicated layer as “cut out” and change the blending mode of it to “Hard Light”. Then make another duplication of this “cut out” layer and you will have the following effect:

1-effect-1

Now you will see the the bottom part of the photo is completely black, which is not very nice in my opinion. To reveal the original image, we can add a vector mask to each “cut out” layer and grab a big soft eraser to erase the portion as shown below:

1-vector-mask

And you will see the original texture come back:

1-effect

Step 2

Go back to the background layer and make another duplication of it. Drag the duplicated layer on top of all previous layer and go to Filter > Sketch > Chrome and apply the following settings:

2-chrome

Name this duplicated layer as “chrome” and change the layer blending mode to “soft light”. Then duplicate the “chrome” once more and you will have the following effect:

2-effect

Step 3

Now we can add a light source (I chose from the top right) for this image so later on we can have some dynamic light effect. To do this, go back to the background layer and duplicate it once more. Drag the duplicate layer above all other layers, go to Filter > Noise > Median and apply the following settings:

3-median

Rename this layer as “Median” and add a vector mask to it, grab a big soft eraser and erase the portion as shown below:

3-mask

And you will have the folloiwng effect so far:

3-effect

Step 4

Now we can add a urban city background to the image. Download a copy of this city image and load it into Photoshop. Drag the entire image onto our canvas and resize until it covers the whole canvas.

On this newly created layer, apply the following adjustments:

Black and White

4-black-and-white

4-curve

Then apply the following filters:

Halftone Pattern

4-half-tone

Box Blur

4-box-blur

Name this layer as “city” and you will have the following effect as a result:

4-effect

Step 5

Go back to the background layer, grab the Magic Wand tool and make a selection of the white area:

5-magic-wand

Hit Ctrl + Alt + R and bring up the Refine Edge tool, apply the following settings:

5-refine-edge

Hit Ctrl + Shift + I and inverse the selection, go back to the “city” layer and go to Edit > Clear and you will have see the model image pop out:

5-effect

Step 6

Duplicate the “city” layer once and on the duplicated layer, go to Filter > Blur > Radial Blur and apply the following settings:

6-blur

Change the blending mode the duplicated layer to “Screen” and you will have the following effect:

6-effect

Make a duplicate of this duplicate layer, and change the layer blending mode to “color burn”. You will have the following effect:

6-effect-2

Step 7

Now the upper portion of the image seems a bit empty and we can add a bit of cloud texture to it. So download a copy of this cloud brushset and simply create a new layer and paint some cloud over it:

7-cloud

Hint: to create a light source on the cloud, simply paint over the same position a few times. (In this case, it’s top right corner)

Step 8

To finalise the image, add two new adjustment layers as shown below:

Colour Balance

Shadow

8-col-bal-1

Midtones

8-col-bal-2

Curves

8-curves

And you will have the following effect:

8-effect

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! You can of course add some of your own texture or filter effect and see what the end results are!

Here is my final image for this tutorial: (I slightly adjusted the colour balance and ) – Click to enlarge:

pop-art-urban-poster-final-3

Black and White version:

pop-art-urban-poster-final-4

Hope you enjoy this tutorial, drop me a comment if you have any question, I will try my best to help you out.

Cheers and have a nice day!

ByJames Qu
Updated

  1. Hi. I totally love all your cool and awesome abstract tutorials. Keep up the good work! (:

  2. Hi, sorry for double comment. Is it able for you to teach how you got the end result after the deep orange result? It’s awesome.

  3. Hi Wilson: Thanks for your comment and support! I can give you a hint: try add a new layer with blending mode of “color”, use a soft brush to gently paint over desired area with colour of your choice :)

  5. Extremely informative tutorial, well researched and clearly presented. I am thankful to you, took the time to share this informative post.

    Regards,
    image masking

  7. Wow, your article was so easy to understand and professional. I am new to Photoshop so I appreciated how clearly you described each step. Thank you!!

  9. i like the style of this. It has a nice overall look and is fun. The bright lighting makes it look quite modern.

  12. hey man thankyou for these tuts! i was graphic guy back in the day with macromedia fireworks 8! when i got back in the game with this new photoshop cs3 i was blown away. your tuts have helped me go from website templates to beautiful dewsktop backrounds posters and backround images for websites! please keep them coming i learn somthing new from this site every time i visit it (on a daily basis)

  13. Excellent tutorial! The techniques are fairly simple, and your work is very detailed. Love the final artwork, very stylish and cool! The black and white version looks like something you’ll see straight out of a graphic novel. Fantastic!

  15. How do you put vector masks on your layers? It’s probably a stupid question, but I don’t know how to do it. Lol.

  16. I wish you had a video on this because I do everything you say and does not look anything like that. How are you suppose to add the city? Place, Import, etc?

  18. i’m a big fan of your artest but there is something that i don’t know how to do it which is the black and white i don’t know how to reach it in my Photoshop CS

  24. the tutorial was too good, but in the final i am not able to give the colour balance to the whole poster, can you tell me why s it like that.

  30. Hey, nice tutorial!
    I like the way the colors mix together.
    Published it on my website with a link to this tutorial.
    (www.GraphicPusher.tk)
    If you wan I’d be glad if you posted any future work there aswell to get more views! :)

  33. kinda lame… No offense but you’re directions aren’t so good. You don’t explain what to do with all the layers we have to make… I assumed we were to merge them? You should probably be as specific as possible if you’re trying to explain things to people… Didn’t work out to well for me =[ yours looks awesome tho

  34. @MEEA: yes we do flatten the image in the end. No problem for pointing things out, and if you could be more specific with which step you’re experiencing difficulty, I can be more of help.

  43. whoever thinks this is pop art has never remotely looked into any type of art history ever.

  47. im working on cs4 and im new to this but i followed every step to the letter, and found that the final piece was not near the same as yours, obviously theres individual differences but what i mean is the steps you told me to do didnt have the same outcomes as each of the ones you have shown, such as the ones that everybody should have the same and wouldnt be effecte by individual differences, i mean the ones where you do a specific filter, the outcome you show is completely different to what i get :/ as a matter of fact step 1 is practically impossible to go wrong on but my outcome there looks nothing like yours :/

    what can you suggest??
    its a great looking piece of work you’ve done though :)

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