CREATING AN URBAN-STYLE PIECE OF

ARTWORK

Tutorial from

http://psd.tutsplus.com/

Compiled by <<coldbing>>
INTRODUCTION
While grunge has its origins in the 90s, recently the style has been gaining in popularity once more. In
this tutorial, I will show you how to create a dirty, urban-style image using both well-known techniques
as well as a few new ones. You will learn to easily extract complex shapes and we will also create our
own grunge texture.

Preparation:

This tutorial is very stock-heavy. Since the basic theme of the image will be "music," I gathered
a few stock images from iStockPhoto. I suggest that you also choose a theme and gather a bunch
of stock images you think will be useful before you start creating the image. Here are links to
the ones I used: Girl, Speakers, Boombox.
Step 1:

Before we start with the stock, we will quickly create a texture for later use.

So create a new document. I used 800 x 600px for my canvas size. Make sure your foreground
color is black and your background color is white. You can simply press D on your keyboard to
do that.

Add a new layer and go to Filter > Render > Clouds. Then go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise.
Choose the following settings: Amount 50%; Distribution = Uniform; Monochromatic = On. After
that, use Filter > Artistic > Dry Brush with settings: Brush Size = 2; Brush Detail = 8; Texture =
1.

Now again, add some noise by going to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and use the previous
settings. Then use Filter > Artistic > Paint Daubs with the settings shown in the screenshot:
Step 2:

Now use Filter > Brush Strokes > Splatter with Spray Radius = 20 and Smoothness = 5. Your
image should look like this:

Step 3:

Go to Select > Color Range, choose Highlights, hit OK, and you will see that random areas in
your texture are now selected. We will delete them by pressing Delete. Also, delete the
background layer and you're done with your texture! Save it, we'll use it later.
Step 4:

Now we will just cut out all the images that we will use for our further work and save them.

You can do that by using the Pen Tool (P). If you have a complex shape that you want to select
accurately (i.e. hairstrands), then fear not because I will show you a very useful technique in
the following steps.

The model in the stock photo I'm using has very fine hair strands. We want to select her body
shape while also accurately selecting the fine hair strands. In order to do this, go to the
Channels palette and identify the channel with the highest contrast between the model and
background. In this case, I chose the green channel and duplicated it. Make sure the channel is
selected and not hidden.

Step 5:

Our goal is to make a selection of the model. The model should be solid black and the
background as white as possible. With that in mind, we need to paint the headphones and the
model's top solid black, as they are too bright. So trace around those parts and fill the selection
with solid black.
Step 6:

Press Ctrl+M to open up the curves window and drag the two controllers further together to
raise the contrast between model and background. You might need to repeat this a few times.
In the end there may still be some bright parts. Quickly trace around them and fill them with
black.
Step 7:

If you're satisfied with the result, Ctrl-click the channel to make a selection. Press Shift+Ctrl+I
to invert the selection or go to Select > Invert. Now click on the RGB channel and copy+paste
the selection into a new 800x600px file. Voila! You have selected the model with all the fine
hairstrands.

Step 8:

We want to give the model a distressed look. Desaturate the model (Shift+Ctrl+U) and duplicate
the layer. Set the duplicated layer to Multiply and make sure it's on top. Select this layer, open
up the curves window again (Ctrl+M), and raise the contrast until you like the result.
Step 9:

Desaturate the other images, add them to the model, and make a nice composition.
Step 10:

For the next step, we will use some damaged paper as a texture. Just scan some crinkled paper
or try to make a picture with your camera. You can download my paper texture here.
Step 11:

Paste the texture above our image and set the layer style to Multiply. If necessary you should
also desaturate it and raise the contrast a bit. Flatten the image and make a rough selection of
the objects, like below:

Step 12:

Paste the selection into a new file and add the texture we made in the beginning. Set the
Opacity of the texture to 15% so it's more of a background effect.

Fill the background layer of the new file with a color of your choice to give the image more life
by making the paper cutouts really contrast out from the background. I also added some notes
that I quickly scribbled by using a small, round brush and then followed the same paper texture
technique.

Don't forget to add drop shadows to your objects. This way they will look like they were cut out
of paper and pasted on top.
Step 13:

Next I've added some halftone effects and swirl brushes as well as some splatter brushes. If you
don't know how to make halftone effects, check out Sean's Halftone Tutorial. For swirl/splatter
brushes go to DeviantART or Brusheezy.com. Besides that, I added an image of a cityscape. You
can find some great scapes for free at Sxc.hu. When you find an appropriate image, desaturate
the cityscape, boost up the contrast and set it to multiply to get the effect in the final image
below.
CONCLUSION
I am sure that the textures you created and used during this tutorial will be very useful for
some of your following projects. I also believe that the new technique I showed you to extract
complex shapes will also help you in your further work. You might have realized that we didn't
necessarily need to cut out the hair so exactly, since we pasted the model to a plain white
canvas. However, I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to show you this technique
:-)

Compiled by <<coldbing>>