How to create a 60s Psychedelic Poster

Psychedelic Art is a form of visual art inspired by the psychedelic experience as a result of drug just like LSD or something, some people say.. "I'm high.." or something... Lol.

The word "psychedelic" according to wikipedia is "the embodiment of mind to describe the internal world and considered as a psychedelic soul.." In everyday conversation, Psychedelic Art refers to a movement of art in 1960.

Psychedelic Visual Arts is asserting in psychedelic rock concert posters, album covers, lightshows, comics, newspapers, published an unusual or let's say... underground thing.




I was trully inspired by that definition to write a tutorial in how creating a 60s Psychedelic Poster with Photoshop. Guys... Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself... then it's not fun, it's entertainment. Lol...

Step 1

Create a new document (mine is 800 x 1000) then create a new layer called Guides, draw on your document some rough guides with the help of Brush Tool (B) like this..



Step 2

D'ya know about Solid Color? You can find this button on the nottom of the Palette Layer. Try to give a solid color adjustment layer above your Guides layer and don't forget to fill it with a deep Green or something.



Activate your Rounded Rectangle Tool (U) and set the radius so that you get a nice rounded edge that you like. Make sure that you checked Make Work Path As. Click and drag to get your border. Done?!?!?



This is what I'm talking about...



You gotta make a solid color adjustment layer and fill it with whatever you want.. Mine is Orange color.



Step 3

Now's time to set the texts on your rough design there. I used a 'special guests' font called Hobo Medium ATT and you can simply download that. OK... Now hit the T key to invoke Text Tool and click anywhere on your workflow. Type your text there. Hit Ctrl + T and scale it up so that it fits each part of your design. Press Enter when you're done!



Next... We're gonna change the text into paths by Right-clicking on the text layer and simply select the Convert to Shape from the Layers Palette. That will definitely turn your text into paths.



Voila!

Step 4

Go ahead to the menu Edit > Transform > Warp and I suggest you pick the wrap tool to get the text to fit the place you made. Obviously you can play around with it until you get some interesting result. Do not forget to repeat the step for all the text compartments.



Step 5

Now let's change the color on some of this text. Remember about my other tuto about Rainbow Text?!?!? Then you'll get this easily if you said so.



I guess it would be better if some of the text actualized with a stroke. Let's do that, pal. Go ahead.. Apply this kinda stroke to the other text. Here I change the Proudly and Poster layer blending mode effect by turn the Color Overlay off and turn the Stroke to both of them on. Then also, I did the same with the Fill the Opacity to 0%.



Pay attention carefully to the image above... I know that graphic above is lil' bit messed up... but I hope you can find what I meant there... :)



Step 6

Load the selection of the PS Holic layer by Ctrl + Clicking on its vector thumbnail. Hit the M key to invoke the Marquee Tool.



Hit the arrow keys to move the selection down and to the right. Now's the time to hit Alt + Ctrl + Click on the same layer thumbnail to subtract from the selection. Make a new solid color adjustment layer just above the original text and fill it with your secondary color. Set the Opacity to 50%.



Step 7

The thing that's trully gonna make this eyes-catchy and even more realistic is some texture. For that source, you can go search it through google or something with the keyword Paper Texture. I have that one that will do nicely and you can download it at the end of lesson here. What a nice guy! Lol... Copy it if you guys don't have the intention to google it, put it at the top in the Layers Palette and choose Linear Light as the blending mode with the Fill to 15 something something. Lol. Got it?!?!?!



Step 8

See...?!?!?!? What about the image used to it??!! Calm down...!! This is it. Move on to our image that will fill the rest of entire poster. I got a nice Christina Aguilera image for this. Position it just like what you want.



The image above tell us to duplicate the blue channel by dragging it to the New Channel button at the bottom of the Channels Palette. Still with the Blue Channel active, apply a harsh curve to it by pressing Ctrl + M or looks something like below.



Same treatment with the red channel. Slow you down doods... OK.. Now invert each of the two new channels you made by selecting them and hitting Ctrl + I.

Step 9

Create a Solid Color adjustment layer and fill it with the lightest color like you used in the poster, Orange in this case. Back to the Channels Palette. Press Ctrl + click on the thumbnail in the Channels Palette to load the selection from one of the channels you made.

Create a new Solid Color adjustment layer above the previous one and fill it with one of the other colors from the poster, Green in this case. Do the same with the remaining channel that you created and fill it with the remaining color from the poster.





Now on each of the masks on the solid color adjustment layers, apply a threshold. Go to the menu Image > Adjustments > Threshold and drag the slider until you get the detail that looks good to you. Do the same for the other mask on the other color.

Step 10

Geeez, let's get back to the poster. With this special Pen Tool (P), draw a path around the blank area of the poster. Make a new group by clicking on the folder icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette. With the path highlighted, hit the Add Layer Mask button twice to apply the path as a vector mask.




Conclusion

This is why I asked you to create 2 Solid Color adjustment layers in step 9. Here we go... drag them from the singer image over to the poster document and put them into the group that you just created. Scale the image to fill the space as you see fit. After all you've done, don't forget to remove the Guides layer from your Palette Layers bro... :)

Our final 1960s psychedelic-style concert poster :



Have fun guys.

File to download

Other sample :