In this two-part Photoshop tutorial I will show you how to create a vicious medieval movie poster. It is basically a guide on how I have created my movie poster for a fictional movie called “INFICTUS”. This tutorial uses a ton of techniques which I won’t dare to mention here. *EDIT* The second part of this tutorial can now be read here.
I had to do some extensive stock photograph research before I could start which proved to be quite difficult and as a matter of fact I would have to say that the search for good quality images took longer than creating the final poster. At first I only searched for free images that everyone could use but unfortunately I had to rely on premium images.
Create a new document and set the size at 27×41 inches (72DPI). The reason we are doing this at 72dpi is because files like these can get very large and some computers might be too slow to handle them but I wanted to create a large enough canvas to see all the details during editing. Make sure you set ‘Background Contents’ to White.
Download and open the ‘Medieval European Knight‘ image and scale the image by pressing Ctrl + T, hold Shift and drag and rotate one of the corners so that the image is placed the same as below.
We are going to remove the background by using the Pen Tool (P). Once you’re done creating a path around the knight, close it by clicking on the first anchor point. Right-click within the path and select ‘Make Selection…’ and input the following settings (this is done automatically by Photoshop, just in case your version has a fluke) and click OK.
Once the selection has been made, click on the Mask icon in the Layers menu and you will see that this will create a very clean cut-out of our main knight.
Personally I always use Layer Masks no matter what kind of image I’m editing because it is incredibly easy to undo a mistake without permanently destroying the image.
Repeat steps 2-3 for the knight in the top right (Before Fight) and try to scale and rotate the image as shown below.
For the top left knight we use similar techniques but with one exception; we’re going to mask his beard. Always go for the highest amount of details no matter what they are, the viewer of your work will notice! Download the ‘Knight Profile‘ image and open it up in Photoshop. Do not drag this into our poster canvas yet. In the Layers menu, go the Channels.
When masking you want to select the channel with the highest contrast, in this instance we’ll need to select the Red channel. Right-click on this layer and create a duplicate, the original Red channel will be selected by default but you need to select the copied layer.
Go to Image>Adjustments>Levels and try to create a much higher contrast by moving the sliders. If you want to go the easy route, just copy the settings shown below and click OK.
Select the Pen tool (P) again and create a path around the knight. You might want to go around the beard on the inside as we’re going to use a gentle technique to extract the beard. Once the path is done, create a selection and fill it with black. The fastest way to do this is by using a very large Soft Round brush. On to the beard, use a smaller sized Soft Round brush and set the Brush Mode to Overlay. By setting it to Overlay, it will be much easier painting on or over areas you want to keep.
We will need to remove the background to get a clean mask, so go to Image>Adjustments>Levels again and move the sliders but keep your eye on the fine detail of the beard as you don’t want to go overboard.
You’ll notice that there are still some major leftovers which need to be removed. Grab a big Soft-Round brush, set your foreground color to white and set the Brush Mode to Overlay. With the Layer Mask selected, gently paint over the background of the image.
If you have done this properly, you should be left with a pure black and white image. Click on the RGB channel and go back into the Layer menu. Go to Select>Load Selection and a menu will pop up. Select the Red copy as the Channel, check the box to invert the selection and click OK. By inverting the selection, the white will be removed from the selection.
Click on the ‘Add layer mask’ icon in the bottom of the Layer menu and voila! We have a clean mask.
Drag this image into our poster canvas and position it below the European knight layer. Rotate, scale and flip the image horizontally as shown below.
Download and open the ‘Tuscany Farm‘ image but don’t drag it into our poster canvas yet. We will need to mask the landscape on the foreground as we are going to use it to create our own landscape. Go to Channels and copy the Blue channel, as this is the channel with the highest contrast. This will be a bit different from the steps we’ve used for the bearded knight as the landscape has a lot of detail we don’t want to lose.
With the Blue channel copy selected, go to ‘Image>Adjustments>Auto Levels’. By doing this, Photoshop will automatically change the levels and is sometimes extremely helpful and time-saving.
We will need to darken the foreground a whole lot more to get a clean mask. Go to ‘Image>Adjustments>Levels…’ and start moving the sliders until you are convinced that it’s going to work, or you could just input the following settings and click OK.
Grab a big Soft Round brush and start darkening the foreground by using a pure black color. Go easy on this one and don’t go near the trees yet. To darken the trees you will need a lot of patience as this is the part where it gets tedious. Set your Brush Mode to Overlay and darken the trees very slowly and gently. Vary between brush sizes and to see what you’re masking, simply click on the RGB channel and switch between that and the Blue copied channel.
A nice trick to make the masking easier, is by using the Curves adjustment menu. Go to ‘Image>Adjustments>Curves’ and try to find the best balance to contrast the landscape.
Once you’ve darkened the foreground landscape and are satisfied with the result, we’ll need to start painting over the remaining area so it doesn’t show up in our mask. Use the Same Soft-Round brush and the Brush Mode to Overlay but set the foreground color to white. Paint away the areas you don’t need but go easy around the trees. Keep doing this until you are left with something similar to this;
Click on the RGB channel and go back into the Layers menu. Go to ‘Select>Load Selection…’, load the Blue copy channel, check on the Invert box and click OK.
Drag the image into our poster canvas and scale as shown below.
We are going to place a background so we have a better view of what the composition is going to look like. Download and open the ‘Sunset Sky‘ image and drag it below all of the layers, place the image as shown.
Download and open the ‘Langdale‘ image and place it below the ‘Tuscan Farm’ layer as shown below. Highlighted in red are the mountains which are going to be edited later on.
This is where the fun part starts! We’re going to manipulate the two landscape images by blending them together. Disable the view of the ‘Tuscany Farm’ image, by doing this we’ll have a better view when we’re editing the ‘Langdale’ image. Not only are we going to use the mountains but also the land itself for the battlefield.
Before we can do that, we need to clone some of the land and get rid of the sheep and fences. Grab the Clone Stamp tool and zoom in by 300%. Clone the land by pressing Alt right next to the sheep you want to remove, then simply brush over the sheep and it will disapear when done correctly.
Once you’re done with the sheep, go ahead and remove all fence posts and farm houses. If done correctly, you should end up with this;
Select the ‘Tuscany Farm’ image and click once on the Layer mask to select it. What we’re going to do now is blend the two landscapes together. Grab a big Soft Round brush as this will help the blending a lot better. Zoom in at the bottom of the Tuscan hill and simply start painting over the entire bottom area (the Tuscan ground), zoom in by 300% if you want to get the detailing right (trees, fences etc.), vary between brush sizes for this. I’ve lowered the opacity of the ‘Tuscan Farm’ image for better viewing, the red line indicates the figurative border you really shouldn’t cross!
We need to separate the land from the mountains as we are about to add color correction and we really don’t want to give those mountains an ugly color. Select the ‘Langdale’ image, grab the Rectangular Marquee Selection tool (M) and select the ground section. Right-click and create a copy.
With the copied land layer selected, go to the bottom of the Layers menu and add a Color Balance Adjustment layer. By default, this Adjustment layer opens in the Midtones channel which we’ll need to change to blend the photographs together.
Select the original ‘Langdale’ layer and add a Layer mask to the image. Grab a huge Soft Round brush and paint away the entire right side of the clouds and atmosphere area.
You might have noticed that the shield of the European knight is cut off but that won’t be a problem as it will be blocked from our view in the next steps.
Download and open the ‘Renfair Stock Battle’ image in Photoshop and cut out the left and middle knight (or should I say victim?) by using the Pen tool (P) again. This image is slightly problematic as both knights have their feet and legs in the grass which prevents us from creating a clean mask. Just cut around their limbs and around the head of the long-haired knight as there is no way we’re going to get a clean mask. Scale the image as shown below.
Now we’re going to add a small army on both sides of the battlefield. First download and open the ‘Medieval Knights‘ photograph and cut them out by using the Pen tool (P) and place them on the left side of the poster. Repeat this step with the ‘Knightly Tournament‘ photograph but place these on the right.
Every movie poster has ‘noise’, the little specks which helps blend everything together. The following method is really easy but there are other ways to do this but since this is a rather lengthy tutorial, I’ll show you the easy way. Create a new layer and name it ‘poster_noise’, fill it with black and set the Layer mode to Overlay. This layer should be on top of the rest of the layers. Go to ‘Filter>Noise>Add Noise…’ and a menu pops up. Set the amount of noise at 7% and the Distribution should be set to Uniform, then click Ok.
The composition is coming along nicely but we also need to add a black area at the bottom of the poster to act as a transition between the poster art itself and the typography for titling and the billing block. Create a new layer and name it ‘bottom_black_billing’, put this on top of all the layers, use a big Soft Round brush (yes, I love that brush!) and gently paint towards the bottom of the landscape and fighting knights in an oval shape.
If you haven’t done so already, you really should start organizing at this point as it might get confusing. Simply create folders for every element in the composition (‘Top_Knights’, ‘Landscape’ ‘Sky’ etc.). For even better organizing you can give every single folder a different color by right-clicking on the layer visibility icon; the eye, then choose your color of choice.
The second part of this tutorial will be published on monday the 19th of April.
10 Comments so far
What a great resource!
Allan, the second part of the tutorial has already been published, go here: http://www.infictus.com/how-to-create-a-vicious-medieval-movie-poster-in-photoshop-part-2/. I have edited the post with a link to part 2. Thanks for the compliment!
Hey! Perfect tutorial. Love the part 1. And where’s the part 2? 19th April was last weak & still there’s no post of the part 2. I’m anxiously await to learn the next one.
Excellent Tutorial, Paul. I love the final outcome. I cant wait for the Part 2. I think the Title needs a bit of dramatic effects. It looks at bit plain.. just my observation
Thanks Richie! The title does look a bit plain but that will all be explained in Part 2!
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