Designate | Concept Artwork | Photoshop Tutorial

Hello and welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I'm going to demonstrate how to create this vibrant edgy style in Adobe Photoshop. For this example I'm going to create this composition here and I'll be breaking down all the steps I took in order to create this in Photoshop. So here is another example with the same style. Here we have a different subject, color sequence and typographic layout. The last example here is a little more radical. Here I have experimented more with the chopping effect to get a much more abstract feel. If you want to take a closer look at these layouts, you can download the PSD docs. The links are in the description. So to the left here is my thought process. A simple sketch that I quickly rendered as soon as I had the idea. I often get inspired and think of ideas so make quick drawings to capture them. I find it's quite fun and challenging trying to bring these ideas, these simple sketches to life. So when I first thought about this idea, I knew I wanted an abstract background with white stripes at an angle of 45 degrees with the subject chopped up appearing inside the white stripes. I envisioned each stripe to be a different color and size and for the face to appear disjointed to give that choppy effect. So to the right is my finished piece. I'm pretty happy with it. It's clean, sharp and vibrant, just what I was after. So to create this composition is actually rather simple, though with regards to the layers, it will get a little complex. As simple as this composition looks, there are quite a few things going on here. Later on, I will be creating quite a few layers, managing them in layer folders and working with layer masks. So this will also be a good exercise working with the layers panel. I'll be sure to clearly explain each step so you can understand the action and the reason behind it to achieve this effect. So with all that said, let's get into it. So to start, I'm going to need two things, a background image and a subject to work with. The background could be anything, but I wanted something quite vibrant and abstract to set an atmosphere. So I went with this image here. For the subject, I have sourced this image of a model. I think the model is looking pretty quirky, edgy, and fits well with the style I'm going for. I like what's going on here with the makeup. I like the style around the eyes, and I quite like her hairstyle. And I actually purchased these images from a website called photojune.net. Really good royalty-free images and great prices. So check this out. So I'm going to make a start by creating a new document, and I'm going to set the preset to international paper. And I'm going to go with an A3 size. That should be adequate. And I will change the resolution to 150 DPI. This will ensure a nice high-resolution image. Okay, so with the canvas prepared, it's time to bring in my images. I'm going to start with the background. So I'm going to navigate to my project folder and open the background in Photoshop. With the image open, I'm simply going to drag it into my new work document tab and drop it into the canvas area like so. So depending on how small or large your background image is, by pressing Command T, I can activate free transform. And by pressing and holding Shift and Alt on the keyboard, I can click and drag to scale the image up or down very easily. Then I'm going to move it around until I'm happy and simply press Enter to commit. Once that is in place, I'm then going to rename the layer to background on the layers panel. If I take a look at the final image, I can see that the background is a different color. It's more green and blue rather than red. So back in my new comp, I'm going to apply an adjustment layer to the background image. To do this, I will first make sure the layer is selected in the layers panel. Then I'm going to come to the bottom of the layers panel and click the add adjustment layer button. And then choose hue saturation from the options. Then up will pop the adjustments layer panel. In my case, I'm simply going to toggle the hue holder down to around minus 130. And I can see that has changed and looks more like my finished artwork. So adding an adjustment layer will mean I can come back to this at any point and simply toggle the hue. Now later, I will be creating a lot of layers. So to keep things organized, in the layers panel, I'm going to select the adjustment layer, then press and hold Shift on the keyboard and select the background layer. This will select them both. And by pressing Command G, I can group these layers into one layer folder. And I'm going to call this folder background. So now my background is in place. Next, I want to bring in the model image. So here is my model image open in Photoshop. Now before I bring the image into my main comp, I want the model to be set on a white background. Currently, the model appears to be set on a gradient background. So I'm going to have to cut the model out. To do this, I'm going to use the pen tool to draw a path around her. Once that is established, I will make the path a selection. And with the area, I'm going to apply a layer mask. As you can see here, I have now isolated the model from the background. And we can see the transparent area around her. And on the layers panel, I have the layer mask thumbnail. If you're not sure how to use layer masks, I have another video demonstrating this in some depth. So take a look at that. The link is in the description. Okay, so once the subject is nicely separated from the background, I'm going to save this file should I wish to come back to this later. And I will call this file model cutout. Next, I'm going to crop the image. All I'm looking for in this instance is the head and shoulders. So by pressing C to activate the crop tool, I'm going to choose my crop area. And toggle the frame until I am happy. And once I'm sure, I'll press enter to commit. Next, I'm going to click and drag this layer into my main comp tab. And release to drop into the composition like so. In this instance, the image is bigger than I need. So by pressing command T, I can activate free transform and scale the image down by pressing and holding shift and alt on the keyboard. And dragging the top right holder in like so. At this stage, I'm going to try and place the model exactly where I think I want her for the final composition. So I'll place the model nicely in the center. And press enter to commit. So now I need this model on a white background. So by pressing command shift N, I can create a new layer. With this new layer, I'm going to choose the paint bucket tool. I'm going to make sure my foreground color is set to white. And I will click in the canvas area to fill the layer in a solid white. On the layers panel, I'm going to drag this new white solid layer below my model layer. Then I will select the model layer above. And simply press command E. And this is going to merge the layer down with the white layer below. So now I have a single layer with the model set on a solid white background. Great. And I'm going to rename this layer to model. So with the model layer prepared, I am now going to set about creating the stripes that are going to contain the model and the various shades of color. Looking at the finished composition, we can see that these stripes are also placed at a particular angle. So first, I'm going to toggle the visibility of the model layer, so I can concentrate on the stripes. To begin, I'm going to press and hold command shift and press N to create a new layer. With the new layer created, I'm going to use the rectangle marquee tool to create a tall, thin selection, like so. With the selection, I'm going to use the paint bucket tool with the foreground color of white and fill the selection. And press command D to deselect. Then I'm going to rename this layer to white stripe. So I'm going to zoom out a little and press command T to activate the free transform. If I move my mouse cursor off to the side, I can see the icon is now asking me if I want to rotate the object. If I click and drag up and down, I can begin to rotate the strip, like so. Now, with the mouse button held down, if I press and hold shift on the keyboard, I can snap the rotation to various degrees of 15. This is going to allow me to easily snap to the degree of 45. But now I can see the stripe is not long enough. So I'm going to extend the top and bottom holders off the canvas area. And once I'm happy that the stripe is long enough, I can press enter to commit. So this white stripe is effectively going to be a guide. What I'm going to do next is use this shape to create a placeholder. And this placeholder is for the model image to go into later. To do this, I'm going to press and hold command on the keyboard and carefully click the white stripe image thumbnail in the layers panel. Now, by doing this, I'm going to create an outline selection of whatever object exists on the layer. So in this instance, it's the white stripe of the angle of 45 degrees. And if you notice here, the selection is also going off the edge of the canvas area. So with the selection active, I'm first going to press command G. And this will create a layer folder, which will now contain the white stripe I just prepared. With the selection still active, I'm going to come to the bottom of the layers panel and click the add layer mask button. Upon click, I have now applied a layer mask to the folder. If I look closely in the layers panel, I can see the mask layer thumbnail has now been applied to the folder layer. And I can see the white stripe area on the mask thumbnail. To finish this off, I'm going to rename the folder to one. So now this is prepared, it is now time to reposition my stripe on the canvas accordingly to the image and create more. So next, I will toggle the visibility of the model layer back. And by clicking on the layer stripe folder on the layers panel, I can drag this up. Now, I'm going to position my first stripe right at the top so it's covering the top of the model. Be it, in this instance, the top of the head. I'm going to zoom in a bit to get a better look at what I'm doing here. So once I'm happy with my first position, I'm going to start to duplicate the stripes down to cover the model. So with the stripe folder selected on the layers panel, I'm going to press and hold alt on the keyboard and click and drag the stripe down on the canvas like so. I'm going to drag down until I can see a gap between the two stripes. And when I can, I'm just going to release. So now I have effectively duplicated the stripe. And if I look closely in the layers panel, I can see I have also duplicated the folder with the layer mask applied. Convenient. So with the arrow keys, I'm going to move the stripe up until it touches the one above. Now, with the arrow keys, I'm going to press down. I'm going to press down around 15 times. And this is going to create a space between the two stripes. Now, I need to keep this number 15 in mind. I'll be using this again later. Once I'm happy with the gap, I'm going to press and hold alt again on the keyboard and click and drag the stripe down to duplicate the strip again. Then, with the arrow keys, move the stripe up to touch the bottom of the one above. Then, press the down arrow key 15 times. And this will create a gap the same as the one above. So by pressing and holding the space bar, I can click and drag to move down on my canvas area. And again, I'm going to duplicate the stripe by pressing and holding alt on the keyboard and dragging down like so, using the arrow keys to move it up. And then down 15 times to create the same gap. So I'm going to continue to do this process until I have covered the area of the model. And soon, you should have something that looks like this. I now have several stripes covering the model image below. And they should all have the same gaps between them. So now I can see I have a bunch of layers folders here in the layers panel. Now, because I duplicated them all from the original folder called one, we can see they have been named one copy, one copy two, one copy three, one copy four, and so on. So I'm going to quickly double click on each folder name and rename them. So starting with the bottom, I'm going to number them accordingly. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. So that completes all the placeholder folders. Now it's time to turn back to the model image and place her into the stripes. The model layer is currently at the bottom. So I will click and drag the layer to the top of the layers panel so I can now see her more clearly. Now, take a look at this. If I toggle folder one down to reveal its contents, and then, click and drag the model layer into this folder, the model seems to disappear. But look carefully. We can now see the hair appearing in the top strip. And if I click and move the layer around, we can see the model repositioning inside. Now, this is because we applied the layer mask to the layer folder and not the stripe layer. If you create a layer folder and apply a layer mask to the folder, the layer mask will also be applied to whatever layers are placed inside the folder. I'm going to undo this to take my image back out. So now then, we have eight folders. What I want to do next is duplicate the model image eight times and place one image into each folder. Now, this might seem a lot, but there is a good reason for this, and you're going to find out shortly. So by right-clicking on the model layer, I'm going to select duplicate and click okay. So now I have two. By selecting the top layer, holding shift, I can select the layer below. So now I have two selected. With them both selected, I can right-click again and again duplicate these. So now I have four. Using the same process, I'm going to select the four layers and duplicate them to make eight. Now I'm going to click and drag each model image into a layer folder. Once you have done that, you're going to end up with something that looks like this. So where have the images gone? Well, the reason for this is when you drop an image layer into a layer folder, like I just demonstrated, the layer will automatically be placed at the bottom of the layer folder. For example, let's toggle one of the folders down, and we can see here the model image layer, but it has been placed at the bottom, beneath the white stripe layer. So if I click on the model layer and drag it above the white stripe, I can now see it. So now it's a simple case of going through my layer folders and dragging the model layer above the white stripe layer, and soon you will end up with something that looks like this. Now you may be wondering, why did I duplicate the image eight times? Why did I not simply just mask all these stripes onto one image? Well, I could have done that, but the reason I created eight separate images was to give me the flexibility to now move each image inside each stripe. For example, if I move my mouse cursor over any one of the stripes and right click, a menu will appear showing me the layers below. If I select the model layer, I can now use my arrow keys to fine tune the positioning within the stripe. Part of the idea for this artwork is to make each strip slightly out of sync to get a choppy effect. So now I'm going to move my mouse cursor over each stripe, select the model image within, and move the image around until I get an interesting choppy effect like so. I'm not going to do this too much. I don't want to distort the appearance of the face too much, and that's looking pretty cool. So now I'm happy with all the stripes. I'm going to select the first group folder in the layers panel, hold down shift, and select the bottom folder. With them all selected, I will press command G and group them all into one folder and call this folder image stripes. This has been done for a good reason. Now all the image stripes are in one layer group. This is going to make it easy for me to control and easily select the image stripes as one and move them around. If we take a look at the finished example, we can see that these stripes have been trimmed. Next, I'm going to alter the layer masks applied to each folder to get this effect. So I'm going to start at the top and work my way down. Currently, the artwork is too high up on the canvas here for me to get a clean cut of the top stripe. So by selecting the image stripes group, I can simply move the artwork down like so. So with the layer one folder selected, I'm going to select the rectangle marquee tool and draw an area of what I would like to cut away from the stripe. But I want to cut away on both sides. So once I have created my first selection, I'm going to press and hold shift on the keyboard, and I can now see a plus sign has appeared on the cursor. If I click and drag to select another area, this selection will be added. Now, with this selection active, I am carefully going to click on the layer mask thumbnail applied to the layer folder one. Then I'm going to select the paint bucket tool from the menu and make sure to set my foreground color to black. I'm going to move my cursor into one of the selections and click. And now that part of the stripe has been removed. This is because I have just modified the layer mask using a black fill color on the mask layer to hide it. I will press command D to deselect, and again select the rectangular marquee tool, and this time make a selection over the stripe below. Again, pressing and holding shift, I can add to the selection. Carefully make sure to select the mask thumbnail on the next strip folder, and with the black paint bucket tool, click in the area to modify the mask and press command D to deselect. And that's working perfectly. Now I am happy with that. I can select my image stripes folder in the layers panel and simply move the artwork up so I can continue to work on the stripes below. So now I'm going to continue this process down on each strip, making selections with the marquee tool, selecting the appropriate mask thumbnail, and using the paint bucket tool with the solid black color to fill and alter the layer masks applied to each folder. And soon I will end up with something that looks like this. And now the artwork is beginning to take shape. Now, there is something very important to keep in mind here. So I have just trimmed all the stripes, and it's currently looking just fine. Though if I click on the image stripes layer group and start to move it around, I still have other parts of the stripes that were not masked out. That is because they were off the edge of the canvas when I made the selections and modified the masks on the strip folders earlier. So a solution to remove these is to position my stripe artwork in the center, like so. As you can see, some of the artwork is actually crossing off the bottom of the canvas area, but that's okay for now. With the lasso tool, simply draw and make a selection around the artwork and apply a new mask to the stripes image group folder. And now I can see a new mask thumbnail has been applied to this layer folder in the layers panel. If I now move the stripes image folder up, I can see I have chopped off the bottom part of my image stripes artwork. Well, I can rectify this by simply selecting an area over this, like so. Carefully make sure I have the new mask thumbnail selected, and with the foreground color set to white, white this time, I will use the paint bucket tool to fill this area and reveal the artwork back. So creating this new mask on the stripe image folder, I will remove any unmasked areas from the stripes within the image stripes folder, and I can freely move the artwork around and reposition. Perfect. So now I have layer masks applied to the image stripes folder and the white stripe folders within. Now this might seem complicated, but this will give me all the flexibility to modify any parts of the image or masks if I want to later. I am not deleting or removing anything. So if we take a look at the finished artwork, we can see that each slice of the image has a different color tone. Well, to do this is quite easy. What I'm going to do next is again start from the top on strip one. Inside the layer group folder one, I'm going to create a new layer by pressing command shift N, and I'm going to rename this layer to color. Make sure this layer is set to the top of the layer folder. Then I'm going to click on my foreground color and simply select a color. In this case, I will go for a brownish red, and with the paint bucket tool, click to fill the layer. And because the layer is inside the group folder, the mask has been applied. Excellent. So with this new colored layer, I'm simply going to apply a blending mode. To do this, I'm going to come up to the top left of the layers panel and click the blending mode options and select overlay, and this has applied the color effect. So I'm going to move onto the next strip, number two, create a new layer above the model image layer, select a color, perhaps this time more of a purple, use the paint bucket tool to fill the layer and set the blending mode to overlay. So I'm going to continue to do the same process to each stripe, creating a new layer, selecting a color, filling the layer, and applying an overlay blending mode. And soon I will end up with something that looks like this. Now, if you think that some of the overlay effects are too intense, simply click into the layer folder to select the color layer and tweak the opacity of the layer until you get something you are happy with. However, if you feel the effect is not strong enough, simply select the color layer and right click and duplicate. If you are unsure about the color, you can easily change it. With the color layer selected, press command U on the keyboard to pull up the hue saturation panel. Simply toggle the hue handle to preview some other colors and once you're happy, simply press okay. So back over to the finish comp, we can see I have these faint white stripes above the background layer, creating angular beams of light. To create this is simple. On the layers panel, I'm going to come down to the bottom of my layers where I can see my background folder. I will select my background folder and press command shift N to create a new layer just above it. With the rectangular marquee tool, like earlier, I'm going to draw a tall selection, like so, and with the paint bucket tool, I'm going to fill the selection in white. By pressing command T to activate free transform and holding shift on the keyboard, I'm going to click and drag to rotate and snap to the angle of 45 degrees. Before I commit, I'm going to drag the stripe to extend the size off the canvas area, the top and bottom handles, and press enter to commit. Then I'm going to change the opacity of the stripe to 5% up in the top right of the layers panel. Now I'm about to create a lot of these. So to keep things organized on my layers panel, I'm going to press command G to group this new stripe layer into a folder, and I'm going to rename this folder to stripes. Next, I will select the new white stripe layer in the folder and press and hold alt on the keyboard and click and drag up or down to duplicate the stripe. Now, I'm just going to keep duplicating the same stripe multiple times and placing them on top of each other. And as the transparent white stripes overlap, they will create lighter beams of white and create this slick effect. After a while, I will end up with something that looks like this. And now in the layers panel, I have the stripes folder full of all the stripe layers that make up this effect. To create a little more depth, I can select the odd stripe layer and alter the opacity to make it more bright. And that's now looking pretty cool. So now I'm happy with the overall composition. I'm going to finish it off with some text. So with the text tool, I'm going to place my text. For this, I'm using the font Minimal Hard. You can download this font. The link is also in the description. By pressing command T, I can activate free transform, snap and rotate to 45 degrees by pressing shift on the keyboard, resize and position. So that completes the main composition. To finish it off, I'm going to come to my background folder and simply right click and duplicate. With this new folder selected, I will press command E. And this is going to merge this layer folder into a single layer. Then move this layer to the top of the layers panel. And I'm going to apply an overlay blending mode. That's going to add more mood to the colors. So I'm just going to tweak this to around 30%. I'm going to rename this layer to color overlay. And that's it. That finishes the artwork. And in the layers panel, I have a clean and ordered layer structure. Well, I hope you enjoyed this video tutorial. If you like this tutorial, hit the like button on my Facebook page or come and add me as a friend. Don't forget, you can download the documents you saw in this tutorial. All links are in the description. Well, that's it for another video brought to you by tastytuts.com. Thanks for watching. Have fun, guys. And I'll see you next time.