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ByJames Qu
March 8, 2009

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. 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 :)

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:

vintage-poster-final-2

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!

vintage-poster-final-3

PSD Vault VIP Membership

You can download the PSD File for this tutorial via the VIP Members Area for only $6.95/Month (or less)! You will not only get this PSD File, but also 200+ other PSD Files + Extra Goodies + Exclusive Photoshop tutorial there. Signup now and get exclusive!

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:

1-texture-background

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:

1-duplicate

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:

2-bw

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

2-effect1

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

2-mask

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:

2-eraser

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:

2-gradient-fill

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

2-effect-2

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:

3-pen-tool

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:

3-position

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

3-clean-up

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

3-effect1

Step 4

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

4-gau-blur

Set its blending mode to “overlay”.

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

4-watercolor

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

4-effect2

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:

4-effect-21

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):

5-paint

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:

5-pen-tool1

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

5-transform

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:

5-duplicate

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

5-rotate

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:

6-type

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

Blending option

6-blending

Drop Shadow

6-drop-shadow

Inner Shadow

6-inner-shadow

Outer Glow

6-outer-glow

Inner Glow:

6-inner-glow

Color Overlay

6-color-overlay

And you will have the following effect:

6-effect1

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:

7-fit-canvas

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

7-channel-mixer

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

7-effect1

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

7-effect-2

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)

vintage-poster-final-2

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!)

vintage-poster-final-3

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

  3. Great information! Very useful for me. Thanks a lot.
    The idea is awesome. Congrats.

  4. Hey, great tutorial on grunge effects, but I think that you should change the coloring of your grunge brushes layer, or w/e its called.

    The white just doesnt work in front of an already bright background.

  7. @Matt: very good point!!! I will do alternative version with a dark brush and upload it as comparison.

    Thank you very much for this feedback

  8. @no one u know: i see…what a mistake! oh well, hope everyone would still understand it though :)

  9. I love your work! This is really good, excellent techniques, and amazing final artwork. Thanks for sharing this tutorial, looking forward to the next one!

  10. This is very beatiful and nicely done ^^

    To bad I’m na nOOb and don’t understand half of it. Is there a chance making a video tutorial out of this?

  15. Great tuts man, and great site, very very informative, helped me learn alot.
    don’t worry about these clowns who pick your work apart. They should be thankful for your useful advice, and focus on that and not on small trivial matters.

  17. what is a workaround for the black and white adjustment if you don’t have that tool? I’m using cs2

  18. @deej: you can try Channel Mixer with “monochrome” option selected.
    Hope this helps!

  19. I would love you to design us a logo – along this grungey theme, I’ve tried but it’s far to complicated for me.

    Please contact us if you’d like to help.

    Thanks

    Mel

  20. Great tut!! I want to go through them all. I have been wanting to learn about working with textures, and did my own thing following the instructions. Don’t pay attention to those who are critical, great job and THANKS!!

  21. @Rebeca Molins: thank you so much, I’m glad that this tut is useful to you! and btw, I only listen to constructive criticism, and always ignore the rest :)

  22. I searched an hour for step 5 (Part 3). Because when I wanted to do the “free transform tool” was the line of the Pen tool that changed and not the “stroke” added. The only solution I found is to click on “Enter” instead of Esc after doing the “Stroke Path” in order to transform the picture made, but the result is not exactly similar. And I noticed if I wanted, after clicking on “Free transform”, the line and the image change, it would have taken me to be in mode like after clicking on “Create New Fill or Adjustment layer or create a new mask” (Sorry, I’m French and my English is bad). The tutorial is beautiful but I would have liked to see more images of the layer box to check.

  23. Great tuto! I love vintage stuff, i’ll try this with my grandpad’s car :) thanks for sharing

  25. Hey ,I really enjoyed reading what you had to say.You have lots of good ideas.This is really a great stuff.Keep going.Thanks for sharing.

  27. i have learned more about this post so . I am hoping the same best work from you in the future as well. In fact your creative Editing abilities has inspired me

  34. The 1st step grunge texture download at deviantart is corrupted. Don’t go there! I got the Win 7 Antivirus 2011 (a false antivirus program) that automatically downloaded itself onto my computer. It totally hijacked my computer – I could not use any browser and had numerous pop ups that warned of infections. I had to go to a restore point, ran Malwarebytes and I have no problem now. Has anyone else had this problem?

    Great tutorial, too bad someone hijacked the deviantart download.

  35. @wink: the grungy texture download link is now fixed. thank you very much for pointing it out. I did not notice this before.

  36. What about the window? You still have the scene in the background… which do you think would look better, with or without the blurred original scene?

  37. i love this. i used an old record player instead of the car and used my own brushes which i found online for free but it was the vintage thing i was trying to learn and its been fun. i feel more confident if i’m given more creativity at work, i used to look at stuff like this and think crikey i will never know how to do that stuff it looks so complicated but it totally isn’t! thanks!!!

  38. I think it would be better if  the car is bigger in the picture … overall the design is okay.

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