Enlist a motley crew of photos, shapes and grunge brushes to create a gritty city composition in Photoshop
Open ‘Buildings.jpg’ and use the Polygonal Lasso tool to make a selection around the buildings. You don’t need to capture every architectural detail, just the main forms of the building. When done, press Cmd/Ctrl+C to copy. Open Start.psd.
Hit Cmd/Ctrl+V to paste, then hit Cmd/Ctrl+T, Ctrl/right-click, choose Flip Horizontal, scale and confirm. Add a layer mask with the icon in the Layers palette. Select a brush, set Foreground to black, then fade edges with a soft round brush at 80% Opacity.
Open ‘Building.jpg’ and select this building. Copy and paste into the main document. Go to File>Place and locate ‘Sphere01a.png’. Add this in the centre behind the buildings. ‘Place Sphere01b.png’ and position in the upper-right.
Select the Brush tool. From the Brushes presets dropdown menu, load ‘Urban.abr’. Set the Foreground colour to black and Use the Base brush at 25% Opacity to lightly paint at the base of the buildings.
Click the New Adjustment Layer button in the Layers palette and choose Hue/Saturation. Tick Colorize, then set Hue to 50 and Saturation to 25. Paint black in the mask with a soft round brush to restore some of the original colour in areas.
Open ‘Alley.jpg’ and use the Polygonal Lasso tool to make a jagged selection around the tough guy. Copy and paste into the main document. Hit Cmd/Ctrl+T, hold Shift, then scale with a corner handle. Hit Enter to confirm, then use the Move tool to situate.
Set Foreground to white, select the Custom Shape tool and then load ‘Extreme.csh’ from the Presets drop-down menu. Select a shape, hold Shift, then click and drag in the canvas. Add a few more, then apply soft Drop Shadows to each via the fx button.
Open ‘Speaker01.jpg’ and ‘Speaker02.jpg’. Use the Elliptical Marquee tool to select the various grilles and copy/paste them into the main document. Duplicate these by holding Opt/Alt, clicking and dragging with the Move tool. Use Free Transform to vary scale and apply Strokes via the fx button.
Select the Custom Shape tool. Using white and #57b711, create various shapes using the presets Circle Frame, Circle Thin Frame and Boom 1 & 2. Feel free to add other shapes.
Still using the Custom Shape tool, create several clouds using the Cloud 1 preset. Colours used here are: #767676 , # 2d2d2d, # a6c291, and # a89a3d. You can adjust opacity and try applying Strokes and Drop Shadows via the fx button.