Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Go back in time to the 1950’s with just a few filter effects. You know the 1950’s? A time when men were non-violent and sensitive and women were a respected part of society. Oh, wait… So despite all that, some of the fashions and style of the 50s were pretty cool and with this tutorial you can add age and burning crease lines to an image.
Exercise files
There are no related exercise files for this lesson, or we cannot provide them due to copyright issues.
Quick reference
Topic
Create an Old 1950’s Pin-Up Poster image.
When to use
Go back in time to the 1950’s with just a few filter effects. You know the 1950’s? A time when men were non-violent and sensitive and women were a respected part of society. Oh, wait… So despite all that, some of the fashions and style of the 50s were pretty cool and with this tutorial you can add age and burning crease lines to an image.
Instructions
Remove old background
- Use quick selection tool and brush over the model
- To remove from the selection hold on your ALT or Option key and deselect it
- Go to Menu/Selection/Refine Edge.
- Turn on Smart Radius and increase the radius
- Brush in the areas that you want the fine edge to focus on
- Press OK and change the output to “Save to New Layer with Layer Mask”
- Use brush on Layer Mask for further refinement
Create new background
- Create a new layer
- Choose a yellowish brown color
- ALT-delete or ALT-backspace shortcut to fill that layer with color
- Convert for Smart Filters
- Filter Gallery/Texture/Texturize: Scaling 80%, Relief: 2
- Filter Gallery/Brush Strokes/Spatter Texture: 25 and 15
- Press OK
Add burn marks to background
- Create a new layer
- Set foreground color to black: harnesses is at zero and set the size to 732
- Paint around the edges where you want the burns to be.
- Set Blend Mode to Overlay
Adjust the middle model layer
- Make 3 copies by selecting model layer:
- With the Command key (on Mac) or Control key (on Windows) held down press the J key on your keyboard twice
Adjust the top layer
- Convert to for Smart Filters
- Add a Vibrance Adjustment Layer: adjust the vividness slider to -34
Adjust the middle model layer
- Convert to for Smart Filters
- Filters/Artistic/Poster Edges Filter: Edge Thickness: 1, Edge Intensity: 1, Posterization 2.
- Change the Blend Mode to soft light
- Filters/Noise/Add Noise: set to 25
Adjust the bottom model layer (Shadow Blur)
- Convert to for Smart Object
- Enter the Free Transform Mode with Command- or Control-T
- Adjust to Shadow Shape
- Filters/Blur/Gaussian Blur: 6
- Add a Layer Mask and use Gradient tool (black to transparent) to fade out the layer
- Decrease the opacity
Add text
- Add a new layer
- With text tool add text (Snell Roundhand)
- Layer Styles: use Blend If: hold down ALT or option and drag the left side to the right
Add grunge map
- Drag in grunge image of choice
- Use Blend If: hold down ALT or Option and drag the right side to the left
- Change the Blend Mode go overlay
Login to download
- 00:04 The first thing that we need to do extract the model from its
- 00:08 background.
- 00:08 You may be happy with a pink background, but for this case,
- 00:12 I'm going to be changing the background to a little bit darker, older style feel.
- 00:16 So how do we extract a model from the background? Well there are a lot of ways
- 00:20 to do so,
- 00:21 but I usually start with a selection method, and one of my favorite selection
- 00:25 methods is the quick selection tool,
- 00:27 which you can find in your tools bar on the left. It's hiding with the magic wand
- 00:31 tool.
- 00:32 I'll go ahead and select the quick selection tool, it works almost like
- 00:35 a brush. Use the left and right square bracket keys on your keyboard to
- 00:38 increase or decrease the size of the brush,
- 00:41 and all you have to do is brush on top at the model, and you're going to notice
- 00:45 that it is starting to make a selection over the area you brush on top of.
- 00:48 And what's nice is that it detects the edges of the area it’s brushing,
- 00:53 so it doesn't select anything that shouldn't be selected.
- 00:56 Now, on occasion, it will select some areas like this pink in the background.
- 00:59 In that case, you can hold on your ALT or Option key and deselect it like that
- 01:04 area for you.
- 01:05 Then go ahead and refine the edge. So I'll continue to go around this model,
- 01:10 and the nice thing is it doesn't have to be 100% accurate. In a
- 01:13 moment, we're going to be using the refine edge tool
- 01:16 in Photoshop, to make the selection as accurate as possible.
- 01:20 Alright, so now that our selection is complete, we want to make sure to refine
- 01:24 the edges,
- 01:25 so we have a nice accurate selection. There are two ways you can get a refined
- 01:29 edge.
- 01:30 If you have a selection method active, you can find it on the top on your Options
- 01:33 bar,
- 01:34 or you can also find it under the Select menu at the top of your workspace
- 01:37 and go down to ‘refine edge’. Now, in this window, we have a few ways to preview how
- 01:42 our selection will look.
- 01:43 Under the View menu right here, we can choose ‘marching ants’ - you can choose on
- 01:47 black, on-white,
- 01:48 or black-on-white. All of these are different preview methods, but, again it is just a
- 01:52 preview: that's not how it's going to look in the end.
- 01:54 The feature we want to focus on is ‘edge detection’. We're going to turn on smart
- 01:59 radius and increase the radius just a little bit.
- 02:01 You'll notice it has gone around and made a much more accurate selection
- 02:05 around the edges, especially where there's hair and fur.
- 02:08 Now, in this case there isn't too much hair, and hopefully not any fur,
- 02:12 so we don't have to crank up to rate too much. But if there are areas that it
- 02:15 missed, you can always use the refine radius tool
- 02:18 and brush in the areas that you want the fine edge to focus on -
- 02:21 especially hair and fur. So I'll do one very simple pass around the outline
- 02:26 of her hair, just in case I missed any stray hairs that should be there.
- 02:30 And there we go: that looks good.
- 02:33 So our selection is looking pretty nice, pretty accurate.
- 02:37 And once it's done, you don't want to press OK. You want to make sure to change the
- 02:40 output
- 02:41 to ‘new layer with layer mask’. It's very important that you save with the layer
- 02:45 mask, because if you look down here,
- 02:47 there's some areas that look a little bit funky, and in that case you can
- 02:50 always grab the layer mask
- 02:52 and, with a black or white brush, you can always make some refinements.
- 02:56 So, with a black brush, making it a little bit smaller,
- 02:58 I can easily brush over this area that looks a little bit strange.
- 03:01 And this area here kind of got rid of some in the leg, so I can use a white brush
- 03:05 and paint that leg back in just like that.
- 03:11 Switch over to black to get rid of this area. Switch back to white
- 03:14 to paint in some the area that it got rid of.
- 03:18 I can go over here and do the exact same thing.
- 03:19 Switch to black and get rid of some of a selection that it missed,
- 03:23 then switch to white and paint in some of that back.
- 03:26 You get the idea. So let me go back to 100%.
- 03:30 And now we have our model extracted from the background,
- 03:33 and it's time to create our new background. So to start, we create a new
- 03:38 layer.
- 03:38 I’m going to go ahead and select the background and create a new layer, right at the bottom.
- 03:42 We want to choose a yellowish brown color, somewhere right around here.
- 03:46 Set that as my foreground color, and now that it is the foreground color, I
- 03:50 can use my
- 03:51 ALT Backspace or Option Delete shortcut to fill that layer with my foreground
- 03:55 color.
- 03:56 Once you have a new background set again, you can see the importance of using
- 03:59 a layer mask.
- 04:00 There are some areas that still look a little bit weird, so I can grab my layer
- 04:04 mask one more time
- 04:05 and just make some very minor adjustments. I can always go back
- 04:09 later on in the edit
- 04:10 and make some changes to it if necessary. But I like getting those out of the way at
- 04:14 the beginning.
- 04:15 Alright, we'll leave it at that for now. It's not perfect, but it's not bad, either.
- 04:21 Good, now going back to the background, we'll be adding
- 04:25 a few filters to kind of give it an authentic old style feel.
- 04:27 Now before you go ahead and start adding filters like a wild
- 04:31 person,
- 04:32 you want to make sure to convert this layer for smart objects first.
- 04:36 This will ensure you can go back and edit those filters later on if you
- 04:39 decide you don't like them anymore.
- 04:41 To do that, you can either right click on your layer in the layers panel
- 04:44 and choose ‘convert to smart object’,
- 04:46 or under the filter menu, ‘convert for Smart Filters’ - either way will do the
- 04:50 exact same thing.
- 04:51 Once it has been converted, we can start adding our filters non-destructively.
- 04:55 The first filter we're going to be adding will be a texture. I'll hop into the
- 04:58 filter gallery.
- 04:59 I'm going to go down to texture, I'll choose texturize’ and I’ll set it to canvas with
- 05:04 a scaling of around 50%.
- 05:06 Maybe I'll increase that just a little bit, let's say 80%,
- 05:10 and relief about 2. I want it nice and subtle. When I press OK,
- 05:14 it may look a little bit tiled if you are not zoomed into 100%.
- 05:18 But if you zoom in to 100%, you should be able to see it as a nice
- 05:21 canvas style texture in the background.
- 05:24 And finally, the last filter I'm going to be adding, I'll hop back into my filter
- 05:27 gallery,
- 05:28 head up to brush strokes, and I'm going to choose a spatter texture.
- 05:32 I'm going to keep it at 25 and 15 and press OK.
- 05:35 It kind of gives it a little bit of an older feel,
- 05:38 and some of the adjustments I'm going to be making in the next few minutes will add
- 05:41 that even more.
- 05:43 So, let me zoom out just a little bit so I can see my whole entire document, just
- 05:46 like this.
- 05:47 And we want to add a new layer: we're going to be adding some
- 05:50 burn marks to give even more of an older feel. To do that
- 05:54 on the new layer, I’m going to make sure to set the foreground color to black,
- 05:57 and I'm going to grab a nice large brush. So, I'll right click to bring up my brush
- 06:01 picker.
- 06:02 Make sure the harnesses is at zero and set the size nice and large - let's say
- 06:07 somewhere around 1000,
- 06:08 maybe a little bit lower, right around there: 737 - perfect.
- 06:12 And once your brush has been set, all you have to do is start painting
- 06:17 around the edges where you want the burns to be,
- 06:21 just like that. Now, it looks a little bit ridiculous.
- 06:24 That's because we haven't blended it yet. To do that, in your layers panel on the
- 06:28 right,
- 06:29 we're going to set the blend mode: change it from normal to overlay.
- 06:32 That will blend our black brush with the background layer.
- 06:36 You can always go back and make additional burns if necessary, just to
- 06:39 give it a little bit of an older feel.
- 06:41 Perfect: the background is complete. Now, it's time to move on to the
- 06:47 model,
- 06:48 There's a few things we're going to do. I'll be making three copies of this
- 06:52 model,
- 06:52 one's going to be for a blur, which I'll add a little bit later on,
- 06:55 and the other two are going to help give our model an old style,
- 06:58 colorized feel to her. So to make our duplicates, we’re going to select our model layer.
- 07:03 I'll change the name of this to 'model' and with the Command key on the
- 07:08 Mac, or Control key in Windows held down, press the J key on your keyboard
- 07:12 twice, and that will give us three copies of our model layer.
- 07:16 One, two and three. We're not going to worry about this one too much, as it’s
- 07:20 going to be our blur - we'll get to that little bit later on.
- 07:22 But these two we will focus on right now. I'm going to hide
- 07:26 the top one, just so we can see what we're doing on the bottom layer.
- 07:28 I want to take out some of the saturation in this model, she's a little bit too
- 07:32 vivid right now.
- 07:33 So to do that, I'll be adding an adjustment layer, and again, adjustment
- 07:37 layers
- 07:37 further add to the non-destructive editing we've been doing this whole
- 07:41 time.
- 07:42 So at the bottom of the Layers panel, click on the adjustment layer icon
- 07:45 and add a vibrance adjustment layer. Now, from here, you can either adjust the vibrance or
- 07:49 the saturation.
- 07:50 In this case, both of them will work nicely. If you're looking to increase the
- 07:54 vividness of your photos,
- 07:55 you want to select vibrance, or if you're dealing with skin tones. But in this case
- 07:59 because we're decreasing it, either
- 08:00 your vibrance or saturation will work fine. I'll leave it right around -34.
- 08:06 Looks pretty nice right there. It's not too vivid, but it's also not too desaturated
- 08:10 right there.
- 08:10 Okay, so now that that layer has been dealt with, we’re going to move on to our top
- 08:14 layer.
- 08:14 This is the layer we're going to be adding some filters to, and again, before you start
- 08:18 adding filters, you always want to convert it to a smart object.
- 08:21 Right here, once that's done, hop into the filter
- 08:25 gallery,
- 08:26 head up to Artistic and we are going to be adding a ‘poster edges’ filter.
- 08:30 For this filter, I want to make sure I have a nice outline around her body and a
- 08:34 little better posteization going on.
- 08:36 So the settings that probably will work well will be one for the edge thickness,
- 08:40 one for the edge intensity, and two for the posteization.
- 08:43 Now, the nice thing again about using smart objects is that if you need to
- 08:47 edit later on, you can always hop back into your filter gallery
- 08:50 and make the necessary changes if needed. But right now, I'm going to keep it as is.
- 08:55 Now you may like this look the way it is, and may want to keep it the way it is,
- 08:58 but for this edit I'll blend it a little bit with the previous layer. And
- 09:01 to do that I'll change the blend mode
- 09:03 of this layer from normal to soft light.
- 09:06 That will blend it just a little bit, very subtly, with the layer right below it.
- 09:10 And now, the last filter I will be adding will be noise. I'll go down to filter,
- 09:14 noise and then ‘add noise’. Now mostly, you'll probably have the amount set
- 09:18 pretty low and you probably won't be able to see it:
- 09:21 it's because we have the blend mode set to soft light.
- 09:24 So we'll probably have to crank it up somewhere around 25 for that noise to start coming though.
- 09:27 You want it a little bit subtle,
- 09:30 but also enough so you can see it, so it kind of gives a little bit more of an
- 09:34 older feel to it.
- 09:35 And that looks good right there. If I turn off the visibility of this layer,
- 09:39 you can hopefully see what these two filters have done for this layer.
- 09:42 Good, now the last layer we're going to be working on will be the blur that will
- 09:46 go underneath
- 09:46 and beside her. So, I'll select that back layer right there,
- 09:50 and I'll zoom out just a little bit. Now, before I convert this layer to a smart
- 09:54 object, so I can start adding filters and transformation,
- 09:57 I want to make sure to fill it with black. Black, right now, is my foreground color,
- 10:01 so if I very simply hold on ALT or Option and press Delete or Backspace,
- 10:05 it wil fill it with black. And if I move it out of the way so you can see, and indeed,
- 10:08 it has filled it with black. Now that that's done, I can go ahead and convert
- 10:13 it to a smart object.
- 10:14 Again, right click and convert to smart object.
- 10:18 Now, at this time I can start my transformations and my filters,
- 10:22 so enter the free transform mode with Command or Control T on your keyboard.
- 10:26 I'm going to drag it down just a little bit, right around there.
- 10:29 Then hold down Command Shift, Control Shift on Windows,
- 10:33 and drag it to the side: perfect.
- 10:36 Once I'm happy with the positioning, press Return or Enter on the keyboard.
- 10:40 Then you can move it into place if needed. I can move it right there, just so
- 10:43 her hand lines up. Right about there, perfect.
- 10:45 So now for the filters. I'm going to go up to filter,
- 10:50 blur and then ‘gaussian blur’. I'll add it very subtly,
- 10:54 somewhere around five, maybe six, pixel blur. Press OK.
- 10:58 Now, to finish the blur off, we need to fade it out and decrease the opacity.
- 11:02 So to fade it out, we can add a layer mask at the bottom of
- 11:06 the layers panel.
- 11:07 And then, grabbing the gradient tool right over here in the Tools bar, you want to
- 11:11 make sure the gradient is set to ‘black
- 11:13 to transparent’ and then very simply brush down,
- 11:17 just to fade it out just a little bit. Then finally,
- 11:20 decrease the opacity to blend in with the background.
- 11:26 There we go, it's looking pretty nice.
- 11:29 The next element we're going to be adding will be the text. Now the text
- 11:32 really is completely up to you as to what it looks like.
- 11:34 I'm going to be using script-based text using ‘Snell Roundhand’
- 11:38 and make it nice and large. Set it to a dark blue, desaturated color.
- 11:43 I'll go ahead and type out my words of choice.
- 11:49 It's a little bit too small, so I'll transform it up just a little bit,
- 11:53 or quite a bit. Press Return or Enter to accept the changes.
- 11:57 Now, I do want to blend it in with the background just a touch.
- 12:00 So I'll zoom in here, so I can see it at 100%: nice and crisp.
- 12:03 I can enter my layer styles, and down at the bottom, I can use Blend If to blend it
- 12:07 with the background very subtly.
- 12:09 Hold down ALT or Option, ALT on Windows, Option on the Mac,
- 12:13 and drag the left side of this handle to the left, just a little bit. You can
- 12:16 start to see
- 12:18 that it is very subtly blending with the background. Obviously if I go very far,
- 12:21 it is going to blend a lot,
- 12:22 but I want it very, very subtle, somewhere right around there: and press OK to accept.
- 12:27 Perfect, we're almost finished. There are two more things we're
- 12:31 going to be doing, which are completely optional: one of which
- 12:34 is to add some sort of grunge map on top. It looks like there's a face right here,
- 12:38 see the little face?
- 12:39 Anyway, adding a grunge map can further add to
- 12:42 the old feel to your design. So, I'll go ahead and drag this into the design,
- 12:46 right here.
- 12:46 Once it’s in the document, I'm going to hop back into my layer styles dialogue box
- 12:50 and again, down at the bottom in the Blend If section, we're going to make a few
- 12:53 blending changes.
- 12:54 This time, we're going to be effecting this layer, not the underlying layer.
- 12:58 I’m going to drag the left side of the highlights slider to the left,
- 13:01 and you can start to see some of the brighter areas of this branch map start
- 13:04 to fade away,
- 13:06 just like that. And then, finally, you can change the blend mode either to
- 13:09 overlay or soft light, whatever you feel works best, and you can decrease the
- 13:14 opacity
- 13:14 if needed, just to give a little bit more of a grungy feel to this design.
- 13:20 Press OK. Finally, the last thing I love to add to most of my designs - sometimes
- 13:24 it works, sometimes it doesn't -
- 13:26 is a curves adjustment layer. It really starts to sharpen up your image,
- 13:30 just a little bit. I'm going to pull this up a little bit,
- 13:33 pull the shadows down a touch, highlights up a touch,
- 13:37 maybe a little bit, and leave it right around here.
- 13:40 And there we have it. We have our pin-up edit complete, and because we work non-destructively,
- 13:45 all of this is completely editable. So if you want to go back and change the
- 13:49 vibrancy, maybe decrease the saturation of the model just a touch,
- 13:52 you can easily do that. If you want to change the texture background, you can very easily
- 13:55 do that. You can change the blending of the text.
- 13:58 Everything is completely editable, and you're left with a pretty nice looking,
- 14:01 old-style pinup. And again, you may not be looking to create exactly this,
- 14:06 but hopefully you can take the techniques you learned in this tutorial and
- 14:09 apply them to your own projects,
- 14:11 and create exactly what you desire.
Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.