Design a Vintage Car Poster with Grunge Texture, Font and Brushset in Photoshop

In this tutorial,  I will show you the processes involved in making an old-looking, vintage car poster with grunge texture, font and brushset in Photoshop.

The PSD file of this tutorial is available to buy on PSD Vault Shop, or via the PSD Vault VIP members area.

Along the way, we will be using a series of Photoshop techniques such as layer blending options, image adjustments, filter effects and masking. Some of the techniques can be a bit tricky (especially with the Pen Tool), but why not just have a try :)

Here is preview of the final image result for this tutorial:

Alternative version with Newspaper Texture overlay – This idea comes from one of my workmates Claudia Ferreira, who is awecome web/graphic designer and a very nice person!

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Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Download a copy of this grungy texture pack from devaintArt and choose one of those textures, load it into Photoshop. We will be using it as our background for the car poster.

I chose “Texture 1” from the pack:

Now duplicate the background layer and set the duplicated layer’s blending mode to “Multiply” and opacity to 80%. You will see the texture darken a little bit:

Step 2

To further add Duplicate the “Background Copy” layer once and hit Ctrl + Alt + Shift + B to bring the Black and White image adjustment tool, apply the following settings:

Keep the blending mode of the duplicated layer to “Multiply” and adjust the layer opacity to 90%, you will see the following effect:

Add a vector mask for this layer by click on the following button on the layer palette:

Click on the Mask icon and grab the Eraser Tool with a big soft brush, erase a portion of the duplicated layer by following the direction as shown below:

You will see by doing so it created some colour variation and we now have a light source coming from the top right.

Optional: you can add a gradient fill layer on top of this and apply the following settings:

Set the blending mode of this gradient fill layer to “soft light” and opacity to 80%, you will see the following effect:

Step 3

Now we can add the car image onto our texture. Download a copy of this classic car image from stockvault.net and load it into Photoshop.

Use the Pen Tool (or any other selection tool you prefer, but it’s good to practice Pen Tool cos you will feel the benefit later on) to make a working path as show below:

Then Right-click and choose “Make selection” and set the feather radius to 0 pixel, press Ctrl + C and copy the selection, then go to our document and press Ctrl + V to paste the car onto the canvas, resize it as shown below:

Use the Eraser Tool to clean up the edges of the car: (if you did not make a perfect selection)

Name this layer as “Car” and set its blending mode to “multiply” and you will have the following effect:

Step 4

Dupliate the “Car” layer twice. On the “Car Copy” layer, apply the following Gaussian Blur settings:

Set its blending mode to “overlay”.

Then on the “Car Copy 2” layer, go to Filter > Artistic >Watercolor and apply the following settings:

Set its blending mode to “Screen” with 70% opacity. You will have the following effect:

Make  a duplicate of the previous Gradient Fill layer, drag it to the top and right-click on the layer, choose “create clipping mask” and set its blending option to “overlay”.

This will highlight the car according the light source:

Step 5

Create a new layer called “grunge brush” on top the “Background Copy” layer, below the “Car” layer. Download a copy of this brushset from devaintArt.com. Load it into Photoshop.

On “Grunge Brush” layer, use the brush we just download, randomly paint around the car (alter the flow and opacity of the brush for dynamic effect):

Create a new layer on top of the “grunge brush” layer, call it  “grunge stream”.  Grab the Pen Tool to make a work path, right-click and stroke it using a grunge brush we just downloaded (Make sure “Simulate Pressure” is selected) as shown below:

Hit Esc Key to cancel the path, use the Free Transform Tool to distort it until similar as shown below:

Duplicate the “grunge stream” layer twice, on each duplicated layer, use the Free Transform Tool (Ctrl + T) to alter the size, angle of the stream, and position them as shown below:

Merge all the duplicted layers and the original “grunge stream” layer together. Duplicate the merged layer once, rotate and position it as shown below:

Step 6

Now we can add some text effect on the poster. Download a copy of this font from dafont.com. Type some text onto our document as shown below:

On the text layer, apply the following layer blending options:

Blending option

Drop Shadow

Inner Shadow

Outer Glow

Inner Glow:

Color Overlay

And you will have the following effect:

Step 7

For the final touch-up, we can add some cloud texture on it. Download a copy of this cloud image from stockvault.net, load it into Photoshop.

Press Ctrl + A to select the whole image, copy and paste the selection onto our poster, put the newly created layer just above the “Background” copy layer, below the “grunge brush” layer.

Resize and fit it to the canvas as shown below:

Go to Image > Adjustment > Channel Mixer and apply the following setting on the cloud layer:

Change the blending mode of this layer to “soft light” and you will have the following effect:

Optional: if you feel the colour of the car look a bit distracting, you can simply go to “Car” layer and desaturate the layer:

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 result for this tutorial: (sightly adjusted Hue, and add a bit of radial blur to it)

Alternative version with old Newspaper Texture overlay: (You can download this texture here) – This idea comes from one of my workmates Claudia Ferreira, who is awecome web/graphic designer and a very nice person!)

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!