Photoshop tutorial

How to Make This Mixed Media Poster in Photoshop

Take a finished poster comp and turn it into a mixed media print piece: a halftoned digital print, torn paper cutouts, and layered paper and grunge textures. PrintMachine does the printed look and the cutouts, then you build the collage on top with blend modes and a Levels adjustment.

7 steps
PrintMachine

How to Make This Mixed Media Poster in Photoshop

Photoshop document: 16 in x 20 in, 300 dpi, 8-bit.

Settings

Size 16 in x 20 in (4800 px x 6000 px)
Resolution 300 dpi
Color mode RGB, 8-bit

Prepare your layers. Ensure you have a single layer for your poster, which we will apply the printed look and cutouts to. I have the main sigil and the title and tracklist boxes available for quick selections to create the cutouts later.

Open PrintMachine, select your merged poster layer and click Print. Here are the settings I used. Do not click Finish yet.

CMYK Settings

Black Ink Level 52%
White Threshold 0%
Use Photoshop ICC Profile Off

Print Settings

Print Scale 40%
Dot Gain 15%
Halftone Method Jarvis-Judice-Ninke

Make a selection for your first cutout. I did this by holding Ctrl (Cmd) and clicking on the Sigil layer thumbnail. Then enable cutouts and click Create. Adjust the settings to your liking.

Cutout

Enable Cutouts On
Existing Cutouts 1 (selected)
Cut Width 2
Cut Roughness 5

Make your next selection and click New Cutout. Then continue this process for the rest of your cutouts. You can adjust each cutout's settings individually, or all at once.

Cutout

Enable Cutouts On
Existing Cutouts All / 1 / 2 (selected) / 3
Cut Width 2.5
Cut Roughness 2.5

Add paper textures for your cutouts. Set the blend mode to Screen (or whatever you like), and clipping mask them to each group.

Add more paper textures above the DIGITAL PRINT 1 layer, and below the cutout groups. Set these to Overlay and Soft Light, and adjust the opacity to your liking.