Continued… enlist a motley crew of photos, shapes and grunge brushes to create a gritty city composition in Photoshop
Place ‘Sphere02.png’ and ‘Sphere03.png’ into the composition. Open ‘Graffiti.jpg’, make a selection around the lettering, then copy and paste into the main document. Apply a Drop Shadow to each. You can also go ahead and set the Foreground to black for the next step.
Create a new layer below the speaker grilles. Select the freeform Pen tool with the Shape Layers option. Create various drips throughout using both black and a toxic green (#19ea09).
Go to File>Place and add ‘Splat01.jpg’. Set the Blend mode to Darken, hit Cmd/Ctrl+T, hold Shift, then scale with a corner handle. Rotate by clicking/dragging outside the bounding box. Hit Enter to confirm, then use the Move tool to situate.
Repeat the previous steps for ‘Splat02.jpg’. We can recycle these two by duplicating. Select one of the Splats and, with the Move Tool selected, Opt/Alt-click or drag. Use Free Transform (Cmd/Ctrl+T) to scale and rotate the duplicate for variation. Repeat to add more.
Now create a new layer at the top. Set the Foreground to white and select the Brush tool. Lightly paint with the Grunge 01 and Grunge 02 brushes from the Urban set at 50% to add a gritty and weathered look throughout.
Click the Create New Adjustment Layer button in the Layers palette and choose Color Balance. Set Midtones (from top to bottom): -50, +75, -25. Fill the mask with black. Set the Foreground to white, then use a soft brush at 80% Opacity to paint selected areas.
Go to File>Place and add ‘Texture.jpg’. Set the Blend mode to Vivid Light. Add a layer mask with the icon in the Layers palette, select the Brush tool, set Foreground to black, then paint out some of the mask’s centre.
Click the Create New Adjustment Layer button in the Layers palette and choose Vibrance. Set both Vibrance and Saturation to +100 and fill the mask with black. Set the Foreground to white again, then use a soft brush at 80% Opacity to paint select areas.
Click the Create New Fill layer button in the Layers palette and choose Solid Color. Pick #76700c. Set Foreground to black, then paint out selected areas such as the green cloud in the centre and the octopus graffiti sphere.
Click the Create New Adjustment Layer button in the Layers palette, choose Levels. Set the Midtone Input level to 1.26. With black, paint out the edges and central areas you don’t want to brighten.