Creating a movie poster is really exciting. There is no doubt about it. This is one of those projects that you look forward to as a designer.
Creating a movie poster can also be incredibly quick and easy … .. Having picked up a suitable photo and idea, you can create an amazing image in a few minutes. In this lesson, I will show you step by step how to create such a poster.
Materials for the lesson:
Final result
Step 1
After a brief search, I found a beautiful photo of a girl to create this poster. The girl in the photo looks gloomy, which is perfect for us. But I want to further emphasize her gloomy look. For this we will use the filter Plastics (Liquify Filter).
Let’s go Filter – Plastic(Filter – Liquify). Choose a tool Bloating (Bloat Tool (B) to increase the girl’s eyes, and also use the tool Deformation (Forward Warp Tool (W) on her lips and eyebrows. In the screenshot below, you can see the areas where I applied the above tools.
Step 2
The animation below shows the effect before and after applying the filter. Plastics (Liquify Filter).
Step 3
Further, I want to lighten my eyes to the point where they look unusual for a person, besides this, I want to darken the shadows under her eyes and around her face. For the eyes I used the tool Clarifier 
(Dodge Tool) for shadows Dimmer 
(Burn Tool). My result in the screenshot below.
Step 4
Let’s apply sharpness to an image using a filter. Colour contrast (High Pass). Create a duplicate layer, and then go Filter – Other – Color Contrast (Filter – Other – High Pass). Apply a radius value of 15.
Change the blending mode for this layer to Overlap (Overlay).
Step 5
Add some adjustment layers to enhance contrast and image detail. First create a correction layer. Levels (levels).
Next, create an adjustment layer. Hue / Saturation (Hue / Saturation). We will reduce the saturation and slightly change the color tone to add cold tones.
Now, let’s add an adjustment layer. Photo Filter (Photo Filter) to add more cool colors.
Finally, let’s add an adjustment layer. Curves (Curves).
Step 6
Now, create a new layer on top of the image with the girl, but position this layer below all the adjustment layers. Using a large soft white brush with opacity (Opacity) and by pushing brushes (Flow) 30%, start to lighten the image of the girl so that the edges of the image are completely white.
Adjustment layers will give the same cold bluish tint to our white colored area, creating the necessary cold effect that we wanted to give our image.
Step 7
So, to complete the poster, we need to add text. The design of your poster will depend on your type design, whether you ruin it or not.
It seems that when creating movie posters, you go too far, moving away from the style. If you decide to move away from the standard style, then make sure that you do this with the intention that your poster will make an impression. This is one of the best examples when they go beyond the standard style of creating movie posters.
To place the names of the actors at the top of the poster, I used the IMDB (a database of actors posted on the Internet) and chose at random several names of the actors.
For the names of the actors, I used the font Myriad Pro, the outline of Condensed, and for the names of the actors I used the same font, but the outline of Condensed Bold. Any grotesque font with Condensed style is suitable for this step if your database does not have the Myriad Pro font.
For the title of the film, I used the font Trajan Pro. Whether you like it or not, this is a beautiful font that is often used in movie titles for its eye-catching style.
To the font with the name of the film, I applied a light shadow (drop shadow) and internal luminescence (inner glow) using layer styles.
To create titles, I used the font SF Movie Poster. Very good compressed font that allows you to add a large number of names in a very limited space.
In the screenshot below, the final result of the poster. I hope that with the help of this technique of creating movie posters, you have some idea of how quickly and easily you can create a dramatic movie poster.
Final result
Author: Nathan Brown
