Realistic Graffiti Effect Photoshop Tutorial

[Tejmik]

Description
I'm going to attempt to put together a tutorial to give any aspiring photoshop graf writer the techniques needed to tag your images with a certain amount of realism.


Time
This would take me a few hours to complete, because I'm a perfectionist and like to dick with projects long after they're done.

What you need to know
The steps are pretty basic and with a working knowledge of the:
-Selection tool (lasso, pen or other)
-Brush tool
-Blur tool
-Layer blending modes & styles

you should be good to go.

Thanks goes out to ck1gsy the photographer on the wall image I'm taggin. www.sxc.hu

1.Find your image you want to tag I'm using this wall. I chose it because its straight on, but also it already had some decent graffiti on it. for what I'm going to show you, It would take a bit more working of the images to get it that good. Im just giving you the tools to get started.


2.Find a source you want to put on your wall. Im going to start with this, a pic from bofft also on [url]www.sxc.hu


3. MAKE a selection & cut it out.

3. Make a stencil from it by doing the Image > Adjustments > Threshold. I set it to 32 for my image, yours may be different.


4. Go Select > Color Range. Then pick the white color. Set this to around 150 to 180. When you have your selection made, hit Cmd/Ctrl + X to cut it out. Then Cmd/Ctrl + V to paste it on to a new layer. (you will now have a black layer and a white layer.

5. Drag and Drop your Black layer on your wall image. Size it and place it wherever you like. Run the Gaussian Blur filter. 1 Px radius.

6. Select Brush Tool, Round Soft edged brush / Dissolve Blending Mode / 30% Opacity. Brush around some of the edges of your image. (on the same layer). This creates the overspray effect.


7. Select Blur Tool. Round Soft edged brush / 30% Opacity. Work on the edges you just sprayed on. So there's detail, but not so crisp.

8. Drag in the white layer that accompanies the black one. Position and size accordingly. put under the Black layer

9.Work the white layer just like you did the Black one. Gaussian Blur > Brush Tool on Dissolve on some of the edges > Blur Tool on edges.


10. Adding some drips. I found some excellent free brushes at [url]www.brusheezy.com SpoonGraphics sets 1 and 2 to be specific. Work them into the white layer. Set your White layer to Overlay Blending Mode in the Layers Palette.


11.the white was too blah for me... so using a layer style I changed the white layer to a green/yellow gradient. I flattened that layer after I set my gradient, so i can set my "white" layer to Overlay again.


12. That's about it. A simple process of getting your image broken down to only a few colors. b/w for starters. Working the edges a little. adding some bells and whistles.

13. I added a few more elements to this. Excellent graffiti fonts can be found at www.dafont.com "Street Art" is the Nosegrind font. I built this up to 3 layers and played with some of the layer blending modes.

14. Photochopz logo. is just a brush. It got treated and tweaked like the rest. Same goes for Wefunk. Logo of an excellent radio station. Find them on Itunes or [url]www.wefunkradio.com

15. Tejmik, drawn up, scanned in, cleaned up. treated and tweaked like the rest.



Hope you enjoyed this and found it useful. And THAT is my 100 bar rhyme. Happy Tagging

[Darink]

Awesome tutorial. I will definitely practice this to add it to my arsenal. And congratulations on placing in the contest on the other site.

[joshbond]

Awesome Tutorial! Thanks
I cant wait to try this out.

[blazendizz]

nice tut!

[carthago]

pfff, damn ure good, really good.

Thanx a lot

[TDM]

book marked great tut man reps to you

[carthago]

CANT YOU SHOW HOW YOU DID THE COLORING?

it seems to me that the coloring makes it even more realistic. it aint only about the layer style. i think you made some additional stuff to the texture.

[mitsubishigirl]

Dumb question, but it's been YEARS since I've downloaded fonts. I thought you just download them, unzip them and put them into the file you needed them in.
I've tried all that. I've put them in my photoshop file-nothing. What am I doing wrong?

[treehugger]

Originally Posted by mitsubishigirl

Dumb question, but it's been YEARS since I've downloaded fonts. I thought you just download them, unzip them and put them into the file you needed them in.
I've tried all that. I've put them in my photoshop file-nothing. What am I doing wrong?

If you're using Windows you need to unzip the font file and put it into C:\WINDOWS\Fonts. Then when you open Photoshop it will be added to your Font list there.
(That's for Windows XP anyway, not sure if it's the same for Vista.)

[mitsubishigirl]

Originally Posted by treehugger

If you're using Windows you need to unzip the font file and put it into C:\WINDOWS\Fonts. Then when you open Photoshop it will be added to your Font list there.
(That's for Windows XP anyway, not sure if it's the same for Vista.)

I tried that and I get an error in photoshop that says: Could not complete your request because it is not the right kind of document.

[treehugger]

Originally Posted by mitsubishigirl

I tried that and I get an error in photoshop that says: Could not complete your request because it is not the right kind of document.

Weird. Did you have Photoshop already open when you installed the new font into your Windows/Fonts folder? If so then you'll need to restart Photoshop to rebuild the font list for it.

Otherwise I'm not sure.
What's the file extension for the font, is it a .ttf?
If you can provide a link to where you downloaded it I could give it a try, maybe the file itself is dodgy.

Also, you could go into the 'Image' menu in Photoshop, and then the first option 'Mode', and see what's ticked in the list that appears. 'RGB Color' is usually the default and shouldn't have any trouble having fonts applied to it, so if you're not set to that then see if it helps selecting to RGB Color..

[mitsubishigirl]

Yea, the mode was fine and it was a ttf.

I guess it was because I had photoshop open at the time. I closed it and reopened it and it was there and working. Thanks! I'll remember that next time.

[MS.JIGGABOO]

How Do U Uplode A Pictuer???

[Ensanity]

I played around with this today and its GREAT!!!