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Create a Retro Vintage WWII Style Poster: A Photoshop Tutorial

Joe Swinn — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:35:02 +0000

Following the success of my previous Vintage World War Two Poster Tutorial, I’ve decided to do another, this time using a slightly different style. The key to making a good poster is to use the ideas from this tutorial, and create your own unique poster, to improve upon this style. We’ll be using Adobe Photoshop CS4, and hopefully this is possible to follow even if you’re on Photoshop CS3 or CS2 – tell me if there are problems!

Here’s what we’ll be creating:

Open up photoshop, and create a new document with canvas size 1654px by 2338px. (If you’re wondering, that’s the rough resolution of A3 Paper)

Next off, insert this old paper image from Sxc.hu, and resize it over the canvas.

To this, we then add some noise: select Filter>Noise>Add Noise. I’m adding around 45%, but feel free to experiment around a little!

Drop the opacity of the paper layer to around 80%. This adds a little more of the white from the canvas in, to keep the background unobtrusive to the main elements.

Insert this image of clouds into the document, covering the top half of the canvas.

Then, with the new layer selected, click the “Add Layer Mask” button at the bottom of the ‘Layers’ Palette.

With this selected (a little icon next to your layer thumbnail), select the gradient tool, and draw a linear Black>White gradient from the top of the clouds to the bottom; this creates a fade-out effect.

Set the blending mode to ‘Linear Burn’ and the Opacity to 70%.

Now to add in the rays of light. This is probably the trickiest bit of the whole tutorial, but it can be done fairly easily:

The key is to switch the guides on (View>Show>Grid) and the ‘Snap To Grid’ command on (View>Snap To>Grid).

With the pen tool selected, and a fill colour of #fff799, start drawing a japanese sun ray shape. Here’s what you want to create:

If it’s not exact, don’t worry too much – mine definitely isn’t. The origin of the rays will be hidden anyway, so don’t panic!

Change the Blending Mode of the rays to ‘Soft Light’.

Insert this image of bread (or another image of your choice – bread isn’t my most creative inspiration of the year).

Then select the Magic Wand tool, with a Tolerance of 40, and delete the white area around the image.

Change the Brightness and Contrast to -45 and 60 respectively, and then we’ll add a “Dry Brush” effect from the presets (Filter>Artistic>Dry Brush), with the following settings:

After this, stick this image of some planes into the document from SXC. Just use the ‘Magic Brush’ tool with a Tolerance of 40 to get rid of the surrounding sky, to show our clouds in the background.

Then, with the layer selected, click Image>Adjustments>Posterise and select ’8′ as the ‘Number of Layers’.

For the text, I’m using the Freely Available Font Wrexham Script, which is an Awesome WW2 Style Font, and free, even for Commercial Use. Select a font size of 250px, and a Line Spacing of 200px, and a colour of #45340f. Then write the text of your choice. I’ve chosen “Homemade Bread Wins The War”, a useless propoganda phrase for your poster.

To add an underline to one of your words, just use the line tool, with a 10px width, and the same colour as before. To ensure that it sticks with the text layer, just select both layers, and select ‘Link Layers’ – it ensures that when you move the text around to suit your liking, the underline stays with it!

For a finishing touch, you want to add an image of the WWII Housewife. You could, of course find a photo of your choice, then add a Cutout Effect, or a Dry Brush Effect, but I’ve decided to browse a Google Image Search for “1940′s Dress Patterns”. Seriously don’t ask how I searched that in the first place.

Find a suitable image which you can use without infringing copyright, and stick it onto your canvas.

Then, you’re finished! If you need to, continue to modify some elements’ Brightness and Contrasts. It takes a little playing around, but you should get a nice result (for example I’ve changed the contrasting on the Bread Again to -45 and 100 respectively, to add a golden colour to the bread).

If you enjoyed it, or have some creative input to add, please do leave a comment – I’m sure to reply!

Design a Vintage WWII Poster: a Photoshop Tutorial

Joe Swinn — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:28:56 +0000

Ok. As a nice easy start to my tutorials, we’re going to create a World War II themed poster. Here’s a look at what we’ll be creating:

Now we’ve all seen these kinds of things in museums, history books, etc. It’s actually dead-simple, and gives a great end result, too.

Create a new photoshop file – make the canvas size 1500 x 1000

Get a large sized worn paper texture – I’m using http://www.sxc.hu/photo/319356 from SXC because it’s just right for the job.

Place the image on your canvas, and do some adjustments to make sure that it fits nicely. Note: If you can’t see the transform controls, just check the ‘show transform controls’ box at the top. When it is suitably adjusted, apply the transformation by selecting any tool from the panel, and then clicking ‘Apply’ in the dialogue box.

Get a normal picture of any flag of choice. I’m just using a large sized image of the Union Jack (the UK flag) from Google – try to get one of the flags which is a direct-on image of the flag.

Insert the flag image into your canvas, and make sure that it takes up the whole size of the canvas. Then select the flag layer, and apply the wave filter (filter>distort>wave) with the following settings: Now your flag should look like this. If it doesn’t, just play around with the settings until it looks similar.

Now drop the Opacity of the flag layer to ‘5%’

If necessary, delete any bits of white space around the old paper, to make the next step look more authentic. Do this using the magic wand tool, with a tolerance of around ‘10’. Just select the white space and delete.

If you look closely at the edges, the flag seems to go over the edges of the paper. To make the flag keep to the same size as the paper, ensure that the flag layer is above the worn paper layer, and then right click on the flag layer, and select ‘Create Clipping Mask’. This ensures that the union jack does not go over the edges of the worn paper.

Next get a good image of a plane. I got a great image of a spitfire off SXC: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/520632 now insert this into your Photoshop document.

Resize the image, so that it fits nicely inside the paper, with plenty of space around. Then use the magic wand tool to delete all of the white space around the plane. If you notice, the plane has also joined the clipping layer. It’s not really important, but if you want to remove this, just right click on the layer and select ‘Release Clipping Mask’. Then place the plane inside the top half of the canvas.

Now select the plane layer, and apply the ‘Dry Brush’ filter. Do this by selecting Filter>Artistic>Dry Brush. Now apply the following settings: Brush Size: 10 Brush Detail: 0 Texture: 1. Hit ‘Okay’ to apply the filter. Feel free to play around with the settings if you want to tweak the effect.

As you can see, the image of the spitfire is now less Photo-realistic, and now more artistic. This is just the effect that we want for our poster. To really make the effect complete, and to make the image blend into the paper, change the blending mode to ‘Linear Burn’. This darkens the image, and also lets the creases of the paper show through, to give a worn look.

Now select the ‘Pen Tool’ and make the Fill Colour #3a3a0c. This is a dark green colour. With that, draw a slanted bar across the canvas. Do this by just clicking where you want the four corners.

Next, drag the ‘Bar’ layer to just above the flag layer, and then right clicking, and selecting ‘Create Clipping Mask’. Now the bar will not cross beyond the (uneven) edges of the paper. Now change the blending mode of the layer to ‘Overlay’.

If it is necessary, try to align the rotation of some of the plane with the angle of your bar. This is just for layout purposes.

For the next step, you will need two good WWII style poster Fonts. I am using these two free fonts: Komika Axis (http://www.urbanfonts.com/fonts/Komika_Axis.htm) and DayPosterBlack (http://www.fontstock.net/2216/dayposterblack.html). Install the two fonts, and restart Photoshop.

Pick the font Komika Axis, and choose the Colour #999999 with a font size of ’60px’ and write your small text (for me, it is: ‘We’ll soon be back in’) then hit enter, and on the new line, change the font size to ‘120px’ and the font colour to ‘#333333’ and write your second lot of text (for me, it’s ‘Good Old Blighty’ – there’s nothing like a bit of old-fashioned slang!) Then select the blending mode, and change it to ‘Multiply’ and rotate the text to fit inside the bar.

Then select the font tool again, and change the font to ‘DayPosterBlack’ and the colour to ‘#3e3e00’ with a font size of 70px. Then, in the Top-Right corner of the canvas, write your text (I’m writing ‘Not Long, Chaps’). If any other bits of the composition need moving, so that your text can fit in, just shift it or resize it to fit.

Next, find an image of a WWII soldier. I found this one (http://www.sxc.hu/photo/306300) from SXC. Bring it into your composition, and erase everything but the soldier. The easiest way to do this (for a beginner) is to use the rubber tool to go around the edges. I just used a soft-edged 21px rubber-brush-tip. You don’t need to be too accurate – just go around the edges roughly because we’ll soon be using a filter on the image.

Resize the soldier a little, and put him in the bottom-left corner, and add the ‘Dry Brush’ filter once more: Filter>Artistic>Dry Brush with a Brush Size: ‘0’ Brush Detail: ‘10’ Texture: ‘1’. Hit ‘Okay’ to apply the filter. Now change the blending mode for the soldier to ‘Multiply’.

And that’s it! More tutorials and posts will be on the way. If you need, I’m usually around to help: email me at joe@gungurru.com

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