Hi everyone and welcome to another great free Adobe Phtotshop tutorial, today we are going to create the Red Bull Manny Mania poster from starch. We will be using several basic tools and stock images to create the final poster design. As usual, loads of great techniques and tips so pay close attention! Now let’s get started!

To complete this tutorial you need to download the brush pack that we are giving away. Also the psd file is available for download. To install the brush extract the rar file and copy the “RB_MM_Brushes.abr” to {C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4\Presets\Brushes}

Let’s Start by creating a New Doc, hit CTRL+N or go to File-New. For this tut we are creating a poster for web but if you were going to create for print you should enter higher settings.

For this tutorial just stick with our settings also make sure you enter a Name in the Name field.

Double click the layer to unlock it and than double click again on the layer thumbnail for the blending options.

Click to select the Gradient Overlay.

Click the gradient and select a gradient presets or design a custom gradient like in the fig above.

When you are done click OK.

Create a New Layer by clicking the Create New Layer icon, next select the Paint Bucket Tool by clicking on it or just hitting (G), choose a gray color and click on the new layer to fill it with gray.

Now we are going to create the strips by applying the Halftone Pattern effect. Select Filter-Sketch-Halftone Pattern.

In the Pattern Type choose Line.

Enter the Size and Contrast Settings, watch the preview window to find the right settings.

When you are done click OK

Now Open the first BG element which is the photo of the Manhattan bridge. We are going to use a technique that we used in the Stencil Look tut, Select Image-Adjustment-Threshold.

Play with the slider until you get a nice silhouette of the bridge in our case a Threshold level of 98 worked just fine. Click OK when you are done.

Select the Move Tool and drag and drop the image into the comp that we are working.

Select the Bridge Layer and place it under the Strips layer also choose Soft Light for the Blending Mode.

Hit CTRL+T to scale the image and place it into view. Note when scaling press SHIFT and ALT to scale the image uniformly.

Now we are going to add the second element to the composition to do that open the image of the skater and select the Magnetic Lasso tool, start tracing around the image.

Note that the Pen Tool and Extraction Filter can be used to select the skater it’s a matter of preferences, choose whatever tool you feel more comfortable to do the extraction job.

Select the Move Tool and drag the selected  skateborder to the main comp.

With the Move Tool still selected place the skater in the center of the comp, also use the same technique to insert the Manny Mania logo in the composition.

Make sure that you place the Manny Mania layer behind the skater layer.

Now we are going to make a copy of the skater layer to do that select the layer and drag and drop it in the Create New Layer icon or just hit CTRL+J to duplicate the layer.

With the new Layer still selected go to Filter-Artistic-Poster Edges. In the effect panel play with the setting until you get a look that you like or like usual just enter our setting.

Click OK when you are done, also lower the opacity of the layer so the effect is a bit softer.

Now we are going to create a new Layer to paint the brush strokes make sure you place the new layer just above the strips layer, everything else should be on top.

Now select the Round Bristle Brush and Start paint just like in the fig above. Note you need to install and load the brush pack that we are giving away with this tut.

To download click here and for the installation read  at the begging of the tutorial. You can also design your own custom brush we have a tutorial on how to do just that: Customized Brush.

Start Painting, don’t be to precise just let it flow naturally.

We are now going to repeat the same steps that we just did, so let’s create a new layer and select it.

Select the Brush Tool and right click on the image to show the brush panel select the Starry 5 brush.

Click on the corner of the image to add stars to the sky, don’t over do it by adding to many stars.

Create another new layer which will be the smoke element layer also make sure that you have named all the layer so you can be more organized.

Select the Brush Tool and right click on the image to show the brush panel select the Smoke brush.

Click on the new layer to apply the smoke, next hit CTRL+T to Rotate the smoke into position.

Now repeat steps from 24 to 26 for steps 30 to 32 adding the round element and Splatter to the new layer.

Select the Text tool to  start adding text to the design.

Choose the font style size and color.

Now start typing your text, make sure you also rotate and scale it so it gives a more interesting look to the overall design

It’s a good thing to stay organized so select all the text that you typed and edited, group them in one folder by selecting all the layers and hitting CTRL+G name the folder Text Group.

Select the Pen tool.

Start making shapes for the text that we crated early.

Select the Path tab.

Select the Path and click the Load Path as a selection icon.

Choose a color for the Foreground Color.

Click on the Layer Tab.

Create a New Layer.

Select the New Layer.

Select the Paint Bucket Tool by clicking on it or hitting (G) on the keyboard.

Fill the new shape with the selected color, now you can use the same technique to design the other shapes. Make sure you experiment with the color, scale, and rotation of the shape.

By using the techniques that we learned above insert more elements to the design, we added another half tone pattern the Red Bull logo and the skull which is available in the brush pack.

When working on projects that have a lot of elements it is very important to stay organized by naming and grouping files.

We finish the design by adding the last elements, now the poster is ready to be published on the web or printed.

[singlepic id=43 w=550 h=606 float=none]

Ok guys I hope you learned new skills and techniques from this tut i also hope they will help you on your future projects. Like usual try to experiment all the time when practicing, have a look at the PSD file to get an idea on how everything is organized. Staying well organized will help you to stay  focus more on the design.

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