Transcripts
1. Introduction: As a photographer and designer, it is not my job to make things beautiful. Things are already beautiful, it's just my job to help people see it. Hello everyone, my name is Temi Coker, I am Photographer and Graphic Design based in Dallas, Texas, and today we're going to learn how to make a digital poster using Photoshop. I love creating posters of my friends and people that I love because I love to celebrate people. It is something that I think we need to do more, and just reminding people that their beauty is amazing. The project that we're going to work on today is inspired by a style that I developed during my Poster a Day project. The Poster a Day project was very important to me and my growth. Sometimes I will go into Photoshop not having an idea of what I was going to create. I just had to go in and do it. So the challenge today is to combine photography, imagery, and type, and bring all of these elements together to celebrate someone that you love. The first one is going to be photograph, second is going to be an animal, and the third is going to be text. There's just some type of appeal that I have with seeing animals and humans, and just finding ways to fuse those two elements together. I'm going to break everything down in such a simple form that you guys will actually see how I'm thinking, and why I used the certain tools that I use. Just know that we're going to go along with this together, and you are not alone, we're going to make sure that you create amazing work by the end of this class. I hope that these tools will not just put you in a box, but make you explore because that's how you learn, that's how you develop your type of style, curiosity, and experimentation. Just keep on creating. I am so excited to start, so let's get it.
2. Your Project: So the project today is to create a poster for someone that you care about. So these types of poster is actually my favorite types of posters to make because I get to actually show people how I view them, and just like add different graphic elements to the posters to make it even more appealing to the eye. I definitely love celebrating people that I know, but also celebrate people that I don't know. I have like a poster of the Ray Mckesson, and he's an activist and I just wanted to portray him in the way that shows all of the things that he embodies. So different elements like a bird that's on the leave which signifies peace. Even there was one where there was a gun, but then outside of the gun was a flower, just shows peace. There are some images from some of my favorite photographers and images that I've seen online that I just connected with them so much. I mean there one a person online that had albinism, and I just wanted to convey how human that person was. Because from where I come from a lot of those people are looked at as outcast sometimes because they're not as dark as the other people. So I just wanted to celebrate how beautiful that imagery was. So what I did was I added butterflies because when we see butterflies we think about how they were all in the cocoon and then they turned into beautiful butterflies with beautiful wings and patterns. So I put that all over the child just to bring that sense of beauty. There are other different projects where I have just used different artistic styles to just showcase the beauty of skin. Come from a country where there's a lot of dark skinned people but there are also a lot of bleach products that are sold there, because they know that a lot of people are suffering from like just not being confident in their skin. So they offer all these bleach products to make themselves lighter. So whenever you see me making art work that showcases the beauty of dark skin is because of the history that I have been through. I wanted people to actually see that their skin is beautiful regardless of how much melanin they have in it. It has been amazing because a lot of people have actually DM me and told me how much they really resonated with art pieces, just because they could actually see themselves in them. I just love that you can give back to the community, and just reminding people that their beauty is amazing regardless of how dark your skin is. I love celebrating people because it is something that I think we need to do more of. Even sometimes when people pass away, like Nipsey Hussle, I was able to make a poster that embodied just what he did. I added some glass elements because I really believe that what he did really affected significant parts of people's lives. The glass in there was like a macro lens and you can actually see the detail. For me it was very important to have those details in there because at the end of the day, I wanted to see Nipsey Hussle in an amazing creative way. So I think a lot of people did a great job with then I wanted to be part of that community as well. So celebrating people lets me also do research. I get to know what they like, how they grew up and try to add those different elements in there as well. Because I have people who have passed away who I wish I celebrated more of. So I take this very seriously because it is something that I really, really believe we need to do more of. So the challenge today is to combine photography imagery and type and bring all of these elements together to celebrate someone that you love. So make sure you take some time to think about who you want to celebrate, what are some things that you love about them and how can you convey that feeling in your poster. So we're going to go step by step to show you how to create this poster. Our first step is opening up a Photoshop document and bringing your imagery in. We're going to be covering a bunch of different tools like the Quick Selection Tool, you're going to learn how to use different types of brushes and playing with the type tool and a bunch of different effects and more, and I have also included the PSD file. So you can actually go back and see what I created and how I created them and make your own thing from that as well. So at the end of this class, please upload your posters to the project page. I would love to see it and I will love for you guys to see each other's posters and give feedback. Ladies and gentlemen, get your computers, let's get started.
3. Taking Your Photograph: So this is a picture of my friend Thurman, and Thurman is a very charismatic person. Thurman is very live, he's a lively person, he's very colorful, he's very approachable, he's someone that you just see and once you hear him talk, you just want to get to know more about him. I was trying to figure out, how can I convey this vibrant personality that he has in a way that people can relate and understand him, just through the visuals. So that is why I'm going to add some of the elements that I add today. So taking the picture and having the picture of the person is very important, especially when it comes to conveying some type of emotion. So I want you to make sure you ask yourself, what kind of emotion do you want to convey through the picture that you're taking? Because once you have that, then you can work off that. You can't go into Photoshop and try to make a person smile. I mean, you can, but it's not going to be realistic. So you might as well have the person smile as you take the picture. So be aware of the different types of emotions that you're trying to convey. If you want the person to have a serious face like my friend here, you can do that as well. If you went into smile you can make sure you have him to smile, so that way when you start designing, the smile and the graphic elements that you're adding actually convey that idea of joy. As you can see, I took this picture with the DSLR but you can take the picture with an iPhone or whatever you have on hand, whether it's a point and shoot. My only suggestion is to make sure that there's some type of contrast between the subject and the background. So for this, because I use the DSLR, I was able to isolate my subject from the background. The reason we do this is, so then when it comes to actually taking the person out the background, Photoshop understands it better. A good way to actually have a subject that has a different type of background, is of course to get your subject maybe in front of a colorful wall or a white wall. Just make sure that they're not wearing white if they're in front of a white wall, so that Photoshop can actually pick them up easier. Another technical consideration is your lighting. You want to make sure that you have even lighting around your subject. You don't have to, but it's a lot easier because you can actually see your subject's face and you're not distracted by shadows. So if you are shooting outside, the best time to shoot is usually around the golden hour. So that is an hour before sunset. So if you go online, or you can ask Siri or Google Assistant or whatever, you can ask them when the sun is going to set, and then just go out an hour before then. You will get the perfect lighting, even lighting all around. If you're shooting indoors, just make sure that there is at least one or two lights to actually light up the subject. If you decide you want to go and use different images online, there are different resources like Adobe stock or Unsplash. Unsplash will give you high resolution images for free. Adobe stock, you have to pay, but you also get really high resolution images as well.
4. Preparing Your Photograph: So the first step is to open up your Photoshop document. All right. So now we're going to go to Create New, and what we're going do here is we're going to make sure that our width and height is 2048 pixels. These are Instagram's new dimensions for squares just in case you guys want to post this online, but also you can print this as a square format maybe 10 by 10 or something like that in the future. So I usually have my resolution on 300 because sometimes I do decide to print this artwork out. So having the resolution that 300 ensures that when I printed out the resolution will look great, and of course I'm going to have my background is white, and I'm going to make sure I'm working on pixels and I'm leaving the orientation right here. Okay. Now, we're going to press Create and we're going to open up our art board. So when I go into Photoshop, I usually go to my Windows and make sure that my work space is on Essentials, and the reason I did this is because I get to customized my scenarios as well. So right here, you can see I have my history, my brush settings, my brushes, my actions, my character for text, and all of these different tools. Now, if you don't see these tools right here, all you have to do is go into windows and click on any of these, and it will pop right up. So if I want to have library show, I'm going to click on Libraries, and this shows right here. Okay, and if I want to close it, I can just right-click and press Close. So the tools that we're going to be working with that we definitely need are actions, character, and brushes. So next, we're going to bring in our photograph into Photoshop. Now, I'm going to go into finder, and right here I have my picture, and all I'm going to do is click on it, and drag it in. So once you have your photograph in Photoshop, your first step is isolating it, and what we're going to do is we want to click on our Quick Selection Tool right here, and the shortcut is W, and what we're going to do is click on Select Subject. Now, before we click on Select Subject, we want to make sure that your layer here is clicked. So you want to make sure your picture is selected down here. Now, we're going to click Select Subject, and what this does is that Photoshop recognizes the edges of your background. This is why it's very important to take your subject and isolate them from the background. Once we're done with that, we're going to click Select and Mask. As you can see, Photoshop did a pretty good job, but it's missing some corners up here, and there are several ways to do it, I'm going to show you an easier way to do this. So you're going to click on Select and mask. All right. Now, right here in our view mode, we want to make sure that it is on overlay. With it being on overlay you get to pick whatever color you want. So for me, I'm going to pick a red, and so the things that are selected will actually pop out in the things that are not selected will actually be red, and so this makes it very easy for me to be able to isolate and see what I'm actually selecting. Now, you want to click on Edge Detection, and don't take it to high. Have it at about two pixels, and what that does is that your selections now are very aware and hypersensitive of edges, and so they do a pretty good job selecting the edges here. Now, make sure that you have clicked on this because now it allows you to actually make the areas that were not selected selected, and if I hold from pressing down the bracket keys, the left and right bracket keys, I can make my selection big or small, and if you press Command Plus, you can actually zoom in to the areas that you want to select. So right now, we got his glasses, and now down here as you can see, it's picked up some parts of the background. So I'm going to hold down Alt, and what that does is that it does the opposite. If you see this when I press Alt, it goes to the minus. So right now I am actually taking away parts of the images. So I'm adding parts of the mask to hide the background. All right. Now, I'm going to teach you guys a quick trick here, I'm going to bring this background down here on purpose. I'm going to teach you guys how to use the Refine Edge brush tool. So if you have images where the person's hair is like in between the background, if you just click on the Refine Edge brush tool, and click around it, Photoshop would do a great job understanding what is the hair and what is the background, and it will do its best job to take that out for you. So as you can see now we actually get some parts of the hair from his beard, so it looks more realistic. All right. Now, we're almost there. I'm going to do the same thing for this part. So you see there's a white spot right here, I'm going to click on it, and now it's gone. You see he has some here down here, I can do this, and it's there. Once you learn the tools, it makes it even more simpler to do all of these different things because back in the day we had to use the pen tool to actually draw around our subject to select them, but now this Select Subject makes it a lot easier. So all I have to do is just fine tune the selection. So now, I think we have everything. Oops, I think we need to fix this part over here, so I'm going to go back to this tool, and click back here and just select part of his been Danner, and now we have everything selected. Now, we don't have to worry about this, I'm going to fix this later. So now that we have it selected, we are going to scroll down here and make sure that your output is on selection. When you press Okay, Now, there is a selection around your subject. All right. With this tool still being selected, the Quick Selection Tool, we're going to right-click and click on Layer Via Copy, and then we're going to hide the original picture, and now we have our subject isolated from the background. It almost looks like he's in front of a white wall. So this is a good starting block for our poster. Next, we're going to start bringing in some imagery to bring this poster to life.
5. Choosing Your Animal: So the next thing we are going to do is, we're going to incorporate some type of imagery into this poster to bring it to life. The image we're going to use is going to be a betta fish. So I'm going to use the betta fish and put that on his head. I know that sounds weird, but a betta fish, they're just colorful and I love that, how vibrant they are, reminds me of him, and they're very approachable. You see them and you're like "Oh my gosh. I want to see the colors that they have". I want that to grab the people's attention. So that's why we're going to use that in this image. So I started using animals after I watched this movie called Black Swan, and I just loved what the swan looked like. I wondered what would it look like if it was on someone's head? So I was trying to figure out what other animals or things of that nature can I put on a person's head? I thought about wings, so wing from an eagle or a bird. I've used that before, but today we're definitely going to be using betta fish because I think that's my favorite because of the way we can play with the color and each of the fins are different. So we can take parts of the fin and put them in different areas on the head. I make sure that the color matches the type of feel I want. So for me, there was a project I did with a woman, and the betta fish color that I picked was red and gold and that just showed royalty to me. I thought the betta fish really fit that subject because she had water on her face, so it almost looked like a mermaid type of thing. So that was where I got the inspiration from to just give her some type of idea of royalty with her skin and different things like that. There's actually another project in another poster that I made, that had a guy that was looking just straight at the camera. I loved it because it captured my attention. I felt like he was looking into my soul, but I was like, "It's too plain. What if there's a way that I can add some type of animal that blocks off, maybe, his face and so that all you can see is just his eyes?" So that now, you have this really intimate reaction to the imagery. So that's what I use. So that is a way of using an animal on purpose to create work that evokes emotion and gets people's attention as well. So you definitely want to be intentional about the type of animal that you're using and choosing just make sure it is something that correlates with the person, or it correlates with the idea that you want to convey. Think about what you want to celebrate in the person, and now think about animals that you could actually use to help bring that to life. Since the goal is to make everything look like one, I have found that fishes, fins, octopus and different animals like that make it very easy for you to manipulate so that that way, at the end of your project, everything looks seamless and together. So today, I'm going to use an image that I got from Adobe Stock, and this is a picture of a betta fish. If you want you, can actually go to Unsplash as well to find a betta fish if you don't want to use Adobe Stock. I found Adobe Stock to be more versatile because I was able to find different types of betta fishes and different angles as well.
6. Incorporating Your Animal : So I'm going to click on this and drag it in. Now, we're going to use the same tool we used last time. We're going to click on the Quick Selection Tool. Make sure you clicked on the betta fish, and we're going to click on Select Subject. As you can see this fish has been isolated from the background because of the edges. Now, if I go and click on Select and Mask, I get this very nice view. I'm just going to go in here and make sure that I have some of my things selected. So I'm going to have my radius again on two and this doesn't have to be perfect. So right now I'm using the edge refine brush tool to take away some of these backgrounds from the fins. So like right here, right here, little bit right there, and this doesn't have to be perfect especially the face. We're not going to be using the face a lot. So really we're going to be focused on this part of it. So anything outside here, you can discard, but I usually just selected just in case I need it. So I'm just going to select this fin down here and now make sure your output is again on selection. Press Okay, and now we're going to right-click on the image and say Layer Via Copy. Once again, we're going to hide the original image and so now we have a betta fish just like that. So off the bat I love the fish fins and I already know I want to put it on his head. So I'm just going to press Command T or if you want you can click on this show transform tool which allows you to actually transform it right here. So I'm going to deselect that. So here you can already see that the fish fin is on his head. Now of course I need to make the size a little bit smaller so it fits. If I reduce the opacity I can actually see where this is fin on his head. So right now I am definitely wanting this to be on his head like a crown. So I'm put emphasis right here on this red thing and I want to make sure that it matches. So I'm going to reduce the opacity so I can actually see. If you look right here, I have the red thing right there on his head, right there. So now, I am going to increase the opacity here. So in order for me to hide this, I'm going to make a layer mask rather than the leading and the reason I'm using a layer mask is so that in case I want to bring parts of this image back, I can bring it back easily. If you delete it, is going to be gone forever and so I like to work smarter not harder. So now I'm going to make the layer mask and I'm going to click on my brush and make sure I'm using a black brush. The way layer mask work is that, the black brush hides and the white brush reveals. So I say black conceals and white reveals. The best way to remember this is if you use black, everything is hidden. So think of when the lights are turned off at home and then when I use whites, everything is revealed. So think of when you come home and all the lights are on. So I'm going to use the black brush and I'm going to make sure I use the soft round brush. Now I'm going to start hiding parts of him. I'm going to take my smoothing down to zero so this works a little bit faster. So as you can see I'm going to zoom in because you want to make sure that this blends in very well with him. You don't want it to look fake or anything like that. I'm clicking on my brackets and make it a little bit smaller and now, I am trying to make sure that this blends in pretty well. So if you make your brush harder, you can actually give this kind of soft blending in there. So right now, we have this on its head. What I'm going to do next is I'm going to click on him by using the Move tool and if you click on auto select, that actually selects whatever you click on and selects it for you in the layers panel. So I'm going to go right here to the black and whites adjustments and what this does is that it's going to turn my image to black and white. Now I'm going to clip this black and white to this image so that it only affects this image and it does not affect the background that we're going to add later. So if I right-click, I'm going to click on create clipping mask and now it is only affecting this image. Now what I'd like to do is that since the image already had some type of red as far as the skin color, I'm going to take down the red just a little bit so he's a little bit darker. So now we get this nice blending effect right. Now, I want to make him a little bit darker, so I'm going to go into my adjustments and bring in my curves. So I can make him darker like this if I wanted to, but of course that does not look realistic. So I'm going to make him a little bit darker like that and bring the highlights out. So you can see his ear and you can go down here to the blacks. I don't like to mess with that too much. So I think this is good enough and I'm going to clip this to the black and whites layer which is actually equipped to this. So all of these two only affect this subject right here. Now what I want to do is I'm going to make all of the images bigger. So all I'm going to do is click on the first image which is of him and I'm going to hold down Shift and I'm going to click on the topmost layer. So as you can see it is selected everything. So what I'm going to do is press Command T or you can click on show Transform tools if you want. What this does is that it allows me to make this image bigger or everything bigger together. So if I hold down Alt, I can click and drag and everything is becoming bigger together, and once you press enter, you got to make sure you click on your Move tool with all of these still selected and now I'm going to bring the image down just a little bit. So that now we have our figure in the middle. So if for whatever reason your layers are down here and you want them to be a little bit higher, you can just click right here in between this and once you get this option, you're able to move your layers up or down. So this way you can now see your layers more. If you decide you want to see your layers bigger, you can click on the panel options and you can actually change the size. So it's all about preference. I like mine to be midsize. Now that we have this betta fish on the hand, I'm going to do a couple of experiments to see what I like best and one of them will be me adding maybe one of these fins to his beard. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to press Command J or you can right-click and say Duplicate layer and what that does is that it makes a layer of this for us. So now we have a new layer of the fish. So I'm going to press Command T so I can make it a little bit smaller and if you hold on Alt, its it makes us smaller in the middle. Okay, and now I know I want to use this as his beard, so I'm just going to move this around to see what best fits. So I think I like this part down here as the bottom. So I'm probably going to maybe make his beard look something like this possibly. Actually I'm going to put it down here like this and since we have a layer mask here, we're just going to keep messing around with it until we find something that we like. So it was all about experimentation. Do you want to make sure it looks realistic, but you also don't want to do too much. So right now, I am ready feeling like down here would be the best for his beard. So I'm going to press Command T and I'm going to resize this again and now I'm just going to hide all of this. Right now we have to make this down here really sharp. Some part we're going to use the Pen tool and just draw a straight line and I'm just going to select this out and make sure you have your Pen tool on shape. Once you hold down command and you click on the shape, it actually turns it into a selection. Now, I'm going to go back to the beard using the black brush. I'm going to hide that part of his beard. Once I press Command D that selection is gone and now I have more freedom and it looks more realistic. Now I'm going to bring it right around here. I'm going to make it a little bit smaller so it looks more realistic. So now it looks like he has a nice goatee. I'm going to use my layer mask again to just take some of these parts out. So right here and now he has a nice goatee. I'm going to do the same thing for this area and now he has a nice goatee. I'm going to make another copy of his hair. Maybe add this underneath this layer so it is now behind them and if I wanted to I could just add different elements to make this look even bigger. Now of course this is all experimentation, you do not have to do this but I love to experiment. So I'm going to use my layer mask again to just hide this up here. I like this down here, but it's a little bit too much. I'm going to resize this still a little bit. I'm going to make this very little on his head, so have it right here and I'm going to have this other layer. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to blend these two together. So I'm going to blend the end of the first fish fin. It's like right here and I'm just going to have a go in there like that. So now if you look closely, we just added this part to it. So that is how you can experiment and add different things to the image to just give it more volume if you want. So now his head is a little bit bigger but I like it. So think of different ways that you can manipulate your animal into your subjects. So you can have that as the top of the shirts or make it a little bit bigger on the head. So it's just up to you you have creative freedom. Your goal with this is definitely not to make it distracting, you want to make sure that the focal point is the most important thing. So for me, that is Thurman. He's the focus and everything I'm adding just accentuates who he is and also brings the focus everything that I want people to see in him and so you want to make sure that you don't put too many elements that are too distracting because, if they are too distracting, them you no longer have a focal point. So think of it that way. Who's your focus in your artwork and how can all of the elements bring that person to life. So feel free to use your animal in different places in the image. You can have them by the top, the bottom, the side. You can make them smaller. I mean, there's so many ways that you can do this. So feel free to experiment. In fact, I want you to experiment. Push yourself to use different areas of the animal. So whether you want to use the tail or if it's for a fish, if you want to use the fin, an octopus if you decide you want to use the leg versus the head. Just try different areas of the animal that you're using and you will be surprised what you can come up with. Next, we're going to start adding some design elements to this poster to make it pop and give it a lot more depth and vibrancy.
7. Adding Accessories: There are so many visual elements that you can create in Photoshop. I'm going to show you some of my favorites. We're going to be doing this in two separate pieces. The first one, I'm going to be adding shapes and using the pen tool to draw a color and a shirt on the subject and the second one, I'm going to be adding some background elements to the image. So looking at the subject then, now thinking about what accessories I can add on his face or even on his body. So the first thing I'm going to do, is I'm going to make a color and then I'm probably going to add an earring here. I just love earrings and then I love his glasses, but I'm going to add probably a little white rectangle right here. I just think it will look dope. The goal of this part is to make the image pop out even more and give us some type of depth, without taking too much attention from the actual focus which is storming. So now I'm going to use the pen tool to draw the color. So the pen tool allows you to draw shapes and it gives you more freedom with how precise your shapes are. So as you can see here, I'm using the pen tool and if click and drag it can actually make it curve. If I click and just go up, I have more of a straight line. But if you click and you drag, you have freedom to give it some curves. So this is how people make vector images using shapes without drawing. So the pen tool gives you that freedom. If you're not used to pen tool you can actually just use the brush tool and draw a color on there as well. I know the pen tool can be very intimidating but I promise you the way I'm going to use it today is going to be so easy. So first thing we're going to do, is we're going to click here and I'm going to click up here and we have a straight line. Now, we're going to click down here and I'm going to drag to give it that curl of a color. Now, if you hold on "Alt", it allows you to change the endpoints. So I can make the endpoints straight, I can make it go this way. I want it to be straight because I know my next line is going to be straight, so I'm going to do it right here. Let go of "Alt"and let go of the mouse. Now, click down here again, and now we have another straight line. Now, we're just going to go back here, give it a little curve and now we have our color. It's black we want to make it white. So what I'm going to do, is I'm going to make sure I'm clicked on the layer and I'm going to go up here and change it to white. Now, another cool thing that we can do right here, is to make sure that we can add a layer mask on this layer and just hide his whole outfit. So that way we know what we're working with. Now, don't worry. I know you can't see the other shape but we're going to fix that in a second. So I'm going to go up here and for the sake of this, I'm going to click on my "Pen Tool" again, I'm going to change this to black. So now we have the color. I'm going to go back up here because I see I erased a little part of here, This is why the layer mask is very important because now I can bring this part back by using white. So I'm going to bring this part of his neck back. Now, I'm going to zoom back out pressing "Command" and the "Minus Key" and we're going to draw another shape. So I'm going to click right here, I'm going to draw another shape. All I did was I clicked up here and then I click down here and dragged. I'm going to do the exact same thing here and I'm just going to click over here, I'm going to drag it. Now, make sure you hold down "Alt" and make it a straight line right here because we know we're going to extend it to this part So Let go of Alt and I'm going to click here and now we have another shape. I'm going to leave it black for now, but we're going to change it eventually once we start working on the background. So drawing a color on the shirts and actually drawing the shirt gives me freedom to change the color of his actual shirt. So this allows me to have more free range and add more shapes in different things like that to the actual subject. So it's very important for me to draw this because now I get a lot of freedom. Because if not, I would have to just work with his shirt. So doing this, I get a lot more space and a lot more freedom to do whatever I want. So now we're going to make earrings, so I'm going to click on the "Shape Tool", and I'm going to click on the "Ellipse Tool". If you hold down "Shift" as you click and drag, it actually makes a perfect circle. So I'm going to make it a little bit smaller. I'm going to click on my "Move Tool", I just going to move the earring right here. Now, it's black and I wanted to match this color, so what I'm going to do is click on the "Shape Tool" again. I'm going to go into my field. When I click on this color right here and this brings out the eye dropper tool and now I can pick a color based off of whatever I want. Second sample colors, so I'm going to go right here and pick the red. Once you press Okay now the earring is red. So little bit to red for my liking, so I'm going to pick the softer red in this image, so something around that color. So now we have the earring. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to do the exact same thing, but I'm going to click on the "Shape Tool", click and drag and click on the "Custom Shape Tool". Now, you have a bunch of different shapes here and I really love this circle shape right here. So I'm going to click on it and I'm going to hold down "Shift" and drag again. Now, we have this nice donuts circle and what I'm going to do, is I'm going to click on the rectangular marquee tool. I'm just going to try to find the half center point here and now I'm going to hold down "Alt" and click on my "Layer Mask". What it does is that, it's going to take away this selection up here. So now we have half of a doughnut. So I'm just going to click here and drag this right underneath and it just gives a very nice feel to the image. So I'm going to zoom out just to see how it is. Now, I think they're both a little bit bigger, a little bit too big, so I'm going to hold down "Alt" and "Shift", I'm just going to make it a little bit smaller. I'm going to do the exact same thing for this one, I'm going to press "Command T" hold down "Alt" and "Shift" and just bring it a little bit lower. Now, we have a very nice look here. I'm going to change this to the blue color. From the fin to something that a little bit like that, got to press "Okay". So now we have something interesting, so I'm going to bring this down just a little bit and now this is what we have. So now I'm going to add one more rectangle right around here, that's going to be white. So I'm going to click on my "Shape Tool" and click on the "Rectangular Tool" and make sure that it is white, and I'm just going to make it a little bit smaller. I'm going to do it here so you guys can actually see. I'm just going to change it to white and we're just going to move it. Press "Command T" to transform it and now we have something nice on his glasses. As you can see, the shapes that are added on here are very subtle but then they give this life. So I want you to experiment and see where you can add shapes. If I wanted to I could add this shape here to give him a nose ring. So it's really up to you, you have the freedom to do whatever you think will make your image pop. So for me, I love adding these earrings, that's my signature thing and I love adding these to the glasses as well. I think that's a very subtle but very important details that bring this image to life.
8. Creating A Background: So the second part is adding a background to the poster. Now I'm going to teach you something called a Reaction Diffusion. I'm going to teach you how to make it in Photoshop. So Reaction Diffusion is something that I have recently been using a lot of my work, and it's very cool because it has this very subtle effect that just makes the images more richer. So rather than having a plain background, I'll make this Reaction Diffusion and I put it in the background by making very subtle. We're going to bring that to life in here using Photoshop actions. These actions are really just three steps, and once you make them, you can have them saved forever, and you can make these patterns as often as you'd like. So now we're going to make a new document. You going to click on "File", you going to click on "New". It could be the same size as the previous one. So 2048 pixels by 2048 pixels at the resolution of 300. You going to press "Create". Now the first thing you want to do is click on your "Paint Bucket Tool". I'm going to make the background black, and we are going to use our brush. I'm going to make sure that our brush is hard round, and we are going to make white dots. I'm going to use it in my bracket keys to make them a little bit bigger. Now all we're going to do is just click around. The more dots you make, the better your Reaction Diffusion will look. Be prepared depending on how fast your computer works, this could take some time. But once you make the action, it'll be a lot easier. But if your computer is very slow, it might still take some time to finish, but the end result is worth it. So now we're going to make an action, and pretty much what a Photoshop action is, is it records what you're doing and saves it so that in the future you can redo what you did but you don't have to do it every time. So let's say I'm making something, it takes me five clicks to make it. I can record that as an action. So the next time I want to make that same thing, I just press the action and it does it for me. So saves time. Especially with this, we're going to have to do these three repeated steps over and over and over again to get the desired effect. But having an action allows me to click it once and it does those three things for me very quickly. So right now we're going to make a folder and I'm going to call it Skillshare Reaction Diffusion. Then next we're going to click down here. This is where you are actually making a new action. So now I'm going to call this RD, which stands for Reaction Diffusion. Once you press "Record" that means it's going to record everything you are doing. So make sure that you don't make a mistake when you're recording because if you do, you're going to have to start all over. So you are going to press "Record", and once you see this red thing down here, it means that is recording everything you're doing. So right now, the first thing we're going to do is we're going to go into ''Filter" "Other" click on "High Pass", and you want to make sure your radius is around six or 6.6. We're going to press "OK." Now I'm going to go to "Image" "Adjustment" click on "Threshold". You want to have your threshold around 128, or whenever you have big black rings. If your rings end up turning white, you have done this wrong. So make sure that your rings are black. So 128 is the number that I have for this. I'm going to press "OK.". Then next, I'm going to go to "Filter" "Blur", and I'm going click on "Gaussian Blur". I usually like to have mine around six as well. So as you can see, it is now recorded all of the actions that we just did. Now I'm going to press "Stop". So as you can see, the radius it recorded that, the threshold it recorded that, and the Gaussian blur it recorded that. Now if I click on "RD" and press "Play", it does all of these three things for me again, and if I keep pressing play, it will keep repeating these steps over and over and over, and you will start to see a desired effect. So as you can see now my shapes are changing into a very nice pattern. It's looking really nice and if you click on it for a while, you start to actually see the change happening in real time. So I'm going to keep pressing "Play". Once it fills the screen, I'm going to show you what to do next. Because right now it looks very blurry and I'm sure you guys are wondering, how can I make this clear? Well, all you have to do, once you have this you go into "Filter" go to "Sharpen" and click "Unsharp Mask", and take this amount all the way to 500. Now you have this fake sharpness. Because if you zoom in, it is really not sharp, but if you zoom out, it looks very sharp. So now that we have this we're going to bring this into Skillshare poster, and I'm going to show you how to do that. Two ways to do it, you could use the Adobe Creative Cloud library. So I can go in here and click on "Libraries". I could literally just click this and drag this in here, and that's the easiest way for me. So now that I have this saved in here, I can always use it in the future, or you can save it to your computer and just drag it in here. But now that I have it in the Cloud, I'm just going to drag it in, and now I have this perfect square that fits. So I'm going to just make it a little bit bigger. Okay. Now we want to make sure that this is at the bottom. So make sure is at the bottom. So now we have this very nice effect here. Okay. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to make a new layer, and I'm going to sample a color. So I'm going click on my "Eyedropper Tool" right here, and probably going to sample like a blueish color, and I'm going to go into my buckets, my paint bucket tool, and I'm just going to click on the background and now we have this background. Now, if I click on the blending modes, and what this does is that it gives the color blending mode and it just has different effects. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to use screen. I'm just going to reduce the opacity of the Reaction Diffusion. So now you can see it very subtle, which I like because remember, we don't want to take attention from the subject. The subject is him and all of these stuff just has to focus and bring people's focus on him. So now that we have this, I'm going to go back to his color, and I'm going to change that to white. I'm going to click on the "Shape" tool, change that to white. I'm going to click on the other shape, I'm going to change that to white as well. I need to make sure that this is under the color. So it's also good to label your layers. I do this so much that I don't sometimes, but right now would be a good time to label your layers.
9. Creating Bold Visuals: So as you can see, this looks really great. The focus is definitely still on Thurman, the background is subtle but still compliments the image. So now, I think I'm going to add some more things to the background to bring more focus on Thurman as well. So now, we're going to make a new layer and I'm going to click on my brush tool and of course, click on the "Mixture brush tool." Now, what this does is that it samples whatever I click on and turns that into a brush, but I have to hold down "Alt" option'. So if I hold down the option key, and I have to make sure that I've clicked on the right layer. So I'm going to click on the hair layer. I'm just was going to sample this section right here. If we look right up here, it already has it there. Now, once you've sampled it, make sure you go back to your new layer before you start drawing anything. So here's what happens when I start drawing. You start to see this very cool effect. All right. Now, as you can see, it looks very messy. So I'm going to use the pen tool to actually make it flow very well. Now, I'm going to click on the "Pen tool" and I'm going to click on the "Paths tool," and now I'm just going to draw a path. Using the same technique that we use with the pen tool, I'm just going to draw different shapes in here. I'm just going to make them go around Thurman, and then I'm going to go into my paths here, right-click, and say "Stroke path." Now, it's going to ask me what tool it wants to use. Since we've sampled this part of the thin using the mixer brush tool, we're going to use that as the tool for it to sample from and we're going to press "Okay". Now, you can see that it starts drawing the fish fin texture onto my art board. Now, this looks very small, so I don't really like it. So I'm going to undo this and I'm going to show you how to make it bigger. So all you have to do is just press the bracket keys on your keyboard and that makes your brush bigger or smaller. So I'm going to have a little bit bigger. I'm going to go back here and click on Stroke Path and press "Okay". Now, as you can see, the path is bigger, my brush is bigger, and it's more dramatic. I prefer the dry, heavy load brush because it gives us very cool effect but if you click down here, there's so many options that you can try. But for me, the dry load effect works perfect. I'm going to go back into my layers. As you can see, I have this here. I'm just going to drag it all the way down. I'm going to make sure it is on top of these two. So now, we have this right behind Thurman. So now, we have a very cool effect and cool feel. Now, to take this paths thing off, you just go to paths and click out of it. So now, we have this very cool effect. What I want to to do is I want to give some type of watery pattern because right now, this is too distracting. It looks cool, but it's too distracting. So what I'm going to do is use a displacement map. What are the displacement map pretty much is is that it takes the texture from something and puts it into something else. So if you think of mock-ups where people have logos on t-shirts that they give to clients so they can see what the t-shirt would look like with their logo on it, that's what a displacement map is. This is actually a trick I learned from a skillshare teacher, Paul Gasm. So he does these different types of techniques, and so I learned that from him, so I just want to give him a shout out. So in order to use a displacement map, I'm going to show you what I did. I found an image online. Using a displacement map, you get to pick whatever pictures that you want. But for me, I always look at the texture of the picture. So right now, I love this water color feel on here. I think it's going to be amazing with the background. So I found this image from one splash and I saved it. I'm going to right-click on it and say "Open with Photoshop". The reason I'm doing this is because you have to save it as a PSD. So I'm going to open it and now that it's open, I'm going to go into "File," "Save As," and I'm going to make sure I save it as a Photoshop document, and now I'm going to press "Okay". Okay. Now that I have it saved, I'm going to go back into my skillshare folder and we're going to go into Filter, Distort, Displace. I had this thought about 200. You can have this at whatever number you want. I'm just going to try 200 to see what it looks like. Press "Okay". Now, it's going to ask you what you want to displace. So I want to use the patterns in this and have it inside of this that I just made. So I'm going to click this PSD file and click on "Open," and you will see that it starts adding the patterns into this document, as you can see. So now, we have this nice painting look. I like it but it's too big. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to make this drawing a little bit smaller. So I'll press "Command T," I'm just going to resize it, holding down ''Alt" so it resizes In the middle. Now, I'm going to go into "Filter," "Distort," "Displace," I'm going to pick the same number, press "Okay," and I'm going to use that same file again. I'm pressing the space bar so you guys can actually see what it looks like. Now, when I press "Open," this is what happens. Okay. Now, we have this very nice displacement. So if you want, you can actually press "Command T" and resize it because what I like to do. Now, we can add it here, and now we have some type of very cool pattern. All right. So now that I have this background here, I'm going to go into "Filter" and there's a tool called the Liquefy tool. Pretty much what I can do is pretty much turned this into liquid, like watery affects. My size here is around 600. My pressure, my density, and my rate are all at 100. What I like to do is just go in here and if you click down, it starts to give some very nice effects. So yeah. Better fishes live in the water. So we're just going to try and use the liquefy tool to give it this watery effect here. Just because this is again goes to making sure that everything in your art makes sense and they're together. So now, I've added some watery effect to it. It's a little bit too much. Maybe this one. A little bit too much. A lot of these tools are definitely powerful, so make sure you just use precaution as you're using them. You don't want to damage our work or take the focus away from what the focus needs to be on. So now, I'm going to press "Okay." As you can see, we have some of the liquid here and here and especially down here. So very subtle stuff. So before we add the text, now that we have the framework of everything, I want to make sure that the colors are rights, so the deli want to put the text in and everything looks amazing and good. So I'm going to mess around with the fan and probably change some of the colors so that everything looks cohesive and well placed together. So one of my favorite tools in Photoshop definitely is the human saturation tool. So before I do that, I'm going to actually pair all of these layers of the fin together because I wanted to make sure that all of these colors are the same. So I'm going to click on the Beard, hold down "Shift: and click on Both hairs. Now that I have them, I'm going to hold down "Shift" and click on this little icon right here and that's the group layer. So it groups everything together. So I'm going to call this group "Facial hair" and I'm going to make my human saturation and I want to make sure I clip it into the facial hair so that that way, whenever I change the colors, it only affects the hair. Here's what happens when you don't clip. It affects everything. I don't want everything to be affected right now. So I'm just going to clip this by right-clicking on "Create clipping mask" and I'm just going to change the color to something that I like. So usually, I mess around with colors, but I know the color that I want which is this orange purple look. I'm going to probably reduce the opacity just a little bit. Now that I have this, I can go down here and do the human saturation and just find the color that is close to that, and maybe increase the opacity just a little bit. Okay. Now that we have the earrings, I need to make sure I go back and change that color. So I'm going to change this year in and color, clicking on the shape and click in here. I'm just going to sample this orange. Probably, this bright orange here. There we go. Then down here, I'm probably going to turn this to white. I think the blue or the purplish blue eye on her skin is too close to being dark, so I'm just going to make it lighter by using white. So now that we have this, I'm also going to change his collar. I'm going to change that to orange. Also whenever you sample colors, it puts the recently used colors here. So I'm just going to click here and I have this orange down here as well. Okay. Now, I need to make sure that this looks realistic, and it doesn't right now. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to click on the color and if you click on this tool right here, it's the direct selection tool. So the shape that we made, we can actually tweak it just a little bit. So I'm going to make sure that it touches the back of his collar. So now, it looks more realistic. I'm also going to probably bring it a little bit higher. Right here. All right. Now, one last touch before we go into the text is adding a shadow down here. So what I like to do is I like to make a copy of the collar. So we can right-click and say "Click on duplicate layer," and I'm going to make it black. I'm going to make sure is underneath. If you press the down arrow, you start to see this shadow. So you can place them out wherever you like. What I'd like to do is I'd like to click on "Filter," "Blur," and click on "Gaussian Blur," and I'm going to restaurize a lawyer. While restaurized does is that, it changes it into a JPEG formats so you can't change the individual anchor points anymore. I'm going to press "Okay." Now, I'm going to change my blending mode to "Dissolve." That gives this very cool grainy effect. What I like to do is reduce the opacity. This dissolve goes well with the background and the hair and everything and the shapes. So it just gives a texture because right now, this is very texture-base. So I wanted to make sure there's some type of texture on the actual shirt. Of course, you can move that around however you'd like. I usually clip this into the body, so it doesn't leave the body. So I'm going to right-click here and say "Create clipping mask." So in that way, even if I go this way, it does not show outside of the body. So like it like this. Now, we have the color on the shirt. Now that we have added the shapes and the textures and all of that, it is now time to add the text. So adding the shape brought more light to this poster, as well as the background. So now that we have all of this situated and have given their color, now it's time to add the text.
10. Incorporating Text: So I'm going to teach you a few ways to incorporate text in your artwork in a way that brings attention to whatever you want attention to go to. So in this case, it is Thurman. So with text, just think about what you want it to say. Do you want it to say in motion, do you want it to say the person's name, do you want it to say something that that person loves to do? So for Thurman, he is a unique person. His name is unique, and that is why I'm using his name as the main text element for this project. So looking at the poster and the way I've made it, I know that the only way I can have text is up here or on the side right here. But I prefer to have it up here, because I definitely want part of it to be hidden, but I also want it to be written well enough that you can actually know what it's saying. But I want this fish fin to kind of be in front of the text to give you some type of depth as well. So now we're going to use a font calibrator, kind of like a boxy but yet simple type of text and typeface. I love this font because it reminds me of high school Letterman jacket type of feel, and when people wear those stuff, they are proud of it. So that's what I want to embody in this. I'm going to click on my type here, and I'm going to type in, Thurman. Now, the text is very small. So now we're going to increase the text. I'm going to make sure it's white, and now the text is all the way at the top. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to drag it, and I wanted to be behind the fin. So I'm going to drag it behind him. All right. So now I'm going to use my move tool, I'm going to bring it here. Now, it looks too big, so what I'm going do now is reduce the text size to about 101, that works. So now I want to bring these backgrounds a little bit higher so that you can actually see the name. So what I could actually do is I'm going to click on my background and click [inaudible] T, and we're just going to flip it. I'm going to flip it and move it a little bit this way. So that now we can see his name up here better. Right. So this is just a small trick to, again, just bring emphasis to what's important. I felt like his name was being hidden back there. So what I also want to do now is, I need to bring all the images a little bit further down and leave Thurman up there, because I want people to see the R, so they know that this is an R rather than the B. So what I'm going to do, is I'm going to click down here, the first image, and I'm going to go all the way up here to click on the top one. But I know I don't want to select Thurman. So what I'm going to do, is I'm going to hold down command, I'm going to click on Thurman and it's going to make sure that he is not selected. I'm going to also deselect this auto select. So now, everything moves except the Thurman layer. Okay. Then now I'm just going to move my background a little bit higher here. I'm going to bring the text just a little bit further down. Okay, and I can go back here and click auto select. Now that we have this, I need to add a background, some type of shadow right here. So there are two ways to do it. The first way is making a new layer and putting there right in front of the Thurman name, and using the black brush. Make sure you go back to your brush tool, because last time we used the mixer brush tool and it might still be on the mixture. So make sure you go back to your brush tool; and reduce the opacity just a little bit, and you can just go up here and use the soft round brush tool. You can go up here and just start adding very little shadows. I would use this to give it more depth. That is one way to do it. You can have the opacity at a 100 and just try it out, and then reduce the opacity after. It's up to you. But the better way is to find the hair that you want to use. So I want to use this one, and if you hold down command and click on there, it turns it into a selection. I'm going to go back to my Thurman layer and make a new layer on top of that, and since this is selected, I can go in here and use my paint bucket tool and paint this black. So if you look down here, the black is already there. Right. Now, I'm going to press Command D, and that deselects it, and I'm going to use my move tool. I'm just going to move this a little bit higher right around here. So add some type of shadow to it. Okay now, you can see it's everywhere and it's distracting. So I'm going to clip it to Thurman layer so it only stays up here and now I'm going to reduce the opacity. So now it looks like there's something up there. Then lastly, of course, you can change the blurriness and you can add some Gaussian blur to it, so that when you increase the capacity, it's more blurry and more subtle. If you want it to be more noticeable, you can make it like that, but I don't want to do that, I want it to be very subtle, because again, I don't want to take attention from Thurman. So I'm going to leave it very subtle up there, and that is the first text that we have up here. So now, I want to add some noise to just give this text some texture. I'm going to go into filter, noise. Make sure you click on the text layer, click on add noise, click on restaurants, and you get to pick how much noise you want. This is what it will look like if there was a lot of noise, but that's too distracting. So I'm going to give it something very subtle, probably around the 16 range, and there are two types of distribution noises that you can have. I always have mine on monochromatic, because it's just black and white, and I have it on uniform, and I really like the texture, it's very subtle and very clean. If I zoom back out, this is what we have here. So framing is very important, so as you can see it in our projects right now, the focus is Thurman, but right on top of Thurman is the text, and as you can see, everything is in the middle. So you want to think about your composition and your placement. The word does not have to be on top, it could be on the side, but just make sure that everything looks cohesive together. Now that we have done the main text, what I want to do is mess around with numbers. What I love about numbers, is that they don't have to make sense. But I'm going to put something very specific in this, that only those who are from New Orleans, which is where Thurman is from; will get it. Right. So I think as an artist, it's important to put those little details that make people really think and look. So the area code for New Orleans is 504. So in here somewhere I'm going to have 504 on there. For me, it's a little nugget, I love the game, Where's Waldo, and I'd love to have people actually look at the piece and try to find something, and I'm sure when people find the 504, they're going to be like, "My gosh, he put that in there." Think about what number you want to put; it could be someone's birthday, it could be the geographic location, it could be the time they were born, it could be their favorite number, whatever you want to do. You can put those around the artwork and just have fun with it. So now I'm going to zoom in, and I'm going to make a new group. This group is going to be called, text. In this new group, I'm going to add a bunch of text. So my text is going to be white. So I want to make sure I have the text on the blue background. So I'm going to have some mostly here, probably here, but I never want it to be on the white, because that's going to be too competing with the background. So now that I have my text group, and what a group does is that it puts everything together, so it's really good for organizing things. So I'm going to make a text here, and I'm just going to put 504, which is the area code for New Orleans. I am going to change the text size to about five. So as you can see, it's very small, but I love it. I'm just going to use my move tool and probably move this somewhere right here. Now, the rest of my text I'm just going to keep repeating and putting weird numbers. Now if you press command and enter, it automatically takes it away from that text, so you can actually click and make another text. So it's very good if you want to work fast. I like my numbers to be two or threes, never ones and never fours. Trying to fill some of these spots with numbers. I'm putting things everywhere, but I'm also just trying to pay attention to the composition of it as well. So I need to make sure that everything is in the place that makes sense. I like the numbers on here because it makes people really question, "Why is he putting all these numbers? What do they mean?" They [inaudible] the surrealism, and it adds emphasis on Thurman, and people literally have to look and almost be like, "Is that numbers? I don't know that's numbers." Then they have to come closer and zoom in to actually see that as numbers. So for me, my goal with all my art work is to make sure that I capture people's attention from the get-go. So if they see my work, and they're scrolling, I want there to be something that makes them look twice. That's what I always go for my work as well. So I'm really happy with how this came out, but there are a few things that I want to possibly experiment on and try and see what happens.
11. Experimenting: So I'm going to try some new tricks that I have been using this on my other works. They might not be best for this artwork, but I definitely want to try it out and see what we can come up with. This is free form right now. I don't know how it's going to come out but I want to give it a try. So now I'm going to go into this layer right here, and I'm going to click on Filter, and I'm going to click on Stylize, and I'm going to click on Wind. I like this staggered effect. So if you see it have this nice pixels in here. I'm going to have a go from left to right. So we can see what it looks like. So I'm going to press Okay. I'm going to click on Filter and click on the Wind again, this is going to repeat it for me. Now, we're getting this type of nice movement, in the background. I am thinking about making a go from top to bottom, so I will flip this over into something like this. I don't really like it, so I'm going to flip it back, but I like how this is right now. This is what I will do. It give some nice pixels down here, some nice texture. I will even go back into Filter, Stylize and use the Wind Filter again, and I'm just going to use Blast, and so now you get an even more detailed thing. But I don't like it, so I'm just going to go back to this one. So right now I have some gradients that I made in Adobe Illustrator. This gradient that I'm picking will be attached to this class. So you guys can feel free to go in there and pick it out. So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to bring this gradient and drag it in here. I'm going to make a circle, and now, I'm going to clip this shape into that circle. So now that I have these two together, I'm going to select them both using shift, and I'm going to right click and say merge layers. So it's going to merge these two layers together. Now, I'm going to go into filter, I'm going to go into the storage, and I'm going to click on Wave. Now, my number of generators is usually five. That's my suite number, and now I can change the amplitude, and I get this nice effect. If I click Randomize that actually randomizes it, and I keep clicking down until I find something that I really like. So let's see here I like this. I'm going to use this here. Now you can feel free to like just click around and drag it, and why not? What I'm going to do is, I'm going to take this down to the bottom and see if I can incorporate it in this art piece. So if you see it at the bottom, I'm going to take that auto select away. It starts to add some nice color into this. So if I bring this to the top, I can change the blending modes to see if maybe I can get something that actually like. As you can see this effect did not work for this artwork, but I use it a lot in my other work. So yeah, at least you learn something. Another technique that I use is the Motion Blur in Photoshop. So the way that you access this is you have to first click on, the thing that you want to add a Motion Blur to, and then make a copy of it. Duplicate Layer. Press Okay. I'm going to go into Filter, I'm going to go into Blur, and I'm going to click on Motion Blur. You can see Motion Blur gives this nice Motion Effect almost blurry. So what I would do is, I would pick something like this and put this behind. But then move it to the side using the arrow keys. I'm just going to click on it so you guys can actually see it move. So I will do something like this. Actually, I'll bring it to the top and have it placed right there. But then, I would hide parts of it using the layer mask. So you have this like, is this really happening right here or not? So it's not fully blurry, but it is blurry. It's a cool effect that I add to my work sometimes to give the edges some blurriness and some depth. Yeah, I actually like this Motion Blur, so I'm just going to keep it for this project. I'm so excited with how this came out. The next step is exporting this, so we can share with the world.
12. Exporting Your Project: Now that we're done with this our work I'm going to show you guys how to export this so that you can share with the world on Instagram or even if you want to print it out as well. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to go into Photoshop, and we're going to click on File, Save As. We're going to save this as a PSD, of course. So I'm going to first save it as a PSD, then I'm going to click on File, Save As again. I'm going to save it as a JPEG. Okay. Now once you're done with the JPEG, all you have to do is, if you have a Mac you can right-click on it and you can AirDrop it to yourself or email it to yourself, however you want to transfer it. Since we have made this size for Instagram, I'm going to show you how to take this size and put it into a template that we're going to make today so that you can actually print this out for yourself and for friends and family or for your shop if you decide to sell your posters. Now since this is square format, we want to make sure that our template is also square format. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go into File, New. The size of your paper is what you're going to put in here. So if I want to print a 12 by 12, I'm going to put a 12 by 12 in here. Okay, and that means this is going to be a square. Okay. Of course, color mode can be CMYK, however, you can actually do RGB. Some printers actually do pretty good with converting RGB to CMYK. Whenever you want to print, of course, you want to always try your best to use CMYK. However, since we made this for Instagram, CMYK might change some of the colors. However, if you decide you want to use RGB, you can do that as well. A lot of the printers now are very advanced and can actually find colors that are very similar. So now that we know our image is 12 by 12, we're going to use this tool called the Frame Tool and pretty much what it is is a place holder. So next time once you have this saved, we can just drag our images in here and press Print. So I'm just going to make a shape and right here in my properties, if properties don't show up click on Windows and click on Properties right here. In my properties, I can actually make sure this is a perfect square. So since my canvas is 12 by 12, I want my print to be about let's say nine inches by nine inches. Okay. Now I want this to be centered. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to hold down command, and I'm going to click on the other shape, the background. I'm going to go to my move to right here, and I'm going to horizontally and vertically align everything. So now my artwork is in here. The placeholder is in here. So what I'm going to do now is to post that we just made. I'm going to click and drag it in here, and all I have to do is just resize it. So if I hold down alt it resizes it from the middle, and since it's a perfect square, it's going to automatically fit. Now that it has fit, I can go to File, and then go to Print, and you just have to make sure that you pick your print setting and your paper quality if you want. Or if you decide you want to save it as a PDF which is what I will do, I will go into File, Save As, and you can pick Photoshop PDF right here, and you want to deselect the layers so that that way you just saves it as a normal PDF. I'm going to say Skillshare Template. Once it is saved, I'm going to save it as high-quality print. I want to make sure that I click this and make sure it's not selected so that the file is smaller. Because what happens is if you preserve the Photoshop editing capabilities, it's going to save it as a PDF. But now you can actually go back in and change stuff, and we don't want to do that. So we're going to press Save, PDF, and now I'm going to go in here, and I'm going to open the PDF we just made and here is our our artwork. Now you just find the company that can print a 12 by 12 and you can have your artwork printed and share it with the world. So the cool thing about this template is that now whenever you print your work is consistent. Also, if you decide you want to use this type of border template for Instagram, you can do the exact same thing. Just make sure it is 2048 by 2048, and the square in the middle just make sure it's a little bit smaller. So this is a good way to have everything be the same across all platforms and all shops. This is what I use for myself and it's helped me out a lot.
13. Final Thoughts: Congratulations, you made it. You learned everything from isolating the character, to turning it into an amazing digital poster. If there's one thing I hope you walk away from this with is that, you are actually able to make amazing stuff, and I hope this allowed you to see your potential. So I want you to use your creativity, use the thing that inspire you, use the things that you love, and create something dope. I would love to see what you've created, so please put your projects in the private page. I will definitely be giving feedback, and I can't wait to see what you guys create. As you share this, don't focus on the likes. The most important thing is that you completed this, and that you did it. What I want you to do is to use this momentum and create other things and keep going. If you want to do a poster today, you can start now. With this, this could be your first poster. So I want you to keep going and don't bother about the likes or anything like that, the most important things that you create a work that you are proud of. Thank you so much for taking the class. I hope you enjoyed it. I will see you next time. Peace.
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Temi Coker, Digital Artist and Illustrator
