How to Create a Medieval Movie Poster in PhotoshopReviewed by Paul Victor on Mar 21Rating:
Step 29
If you haven’t done so already, you really should start organizing at this point as it might get confusing. Simply create folders for every element in the composition (Top_Knights, Landscape, Sky etc.). For even better organizing you can give every single folder a different color by right-clicking on the layer visibility icon, then choose your color of choice.
Step 30
Select the Medieval European Knight layer and add a
Curves Adjustment layer so that it’s on top of all the main knights. Try to simulate the settings below for each channel.
By putting this Adjustments layer on top of the main knights, it will only affect the sky background and the knights.
Step 31
Create a
Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer and put it on top of the European knight, right-click and select
Create Clipping Mask. Enter the following settings, go inside every
Channel and set the
Saturation level of the
Green,
Cyan and
Magentas to
-100. The saturation in the
Blue Channel should be set to
-45, the
Red and Yellow Channels should be left untouched. This will give the knight a grey-ish look which will be different when we add our final
Curves Adjustment layer.
Step 32
It’s very important to create a mood to base your color correction on, so create a new
Curves Adjustments layer and put this on top of all the layers. We have our European knight as a reference, so simply try to create your own color scheme which you think looks best. These are my settings:
Step 33
Back to the European knight. To make the top knights really pop, we’re going to create an almost majestic type of glow around them. Create a copy of the European knight, name it Majestic_glow and make it all white by using Hue/Saturation and set the Lightness to
+100. Go to
Filter>Blur>Motion Blur, set the
Angle to
-90 Degrees and set the
Distance to
775 pixels. Make a copy of this layer and you will notice it becomes much brighter.
Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and set the Radius to 45 pixels, this will soften the harsh streaks of the motion blur a bit.
Step 34
Create a new
Levels Adjustment layer and enter the following settings in the appropriate channels. This Adjustment layer should be made into a
Clipping Mask on top of the
Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer we have made earlier for the European knight.
Step 35
We’re going to give our knight a bit of shine as we want the majestic glow to sort of engulf him in light. Add a new Brightness/Contrast Adjustment layer and but this on top of the Adjustment layers we’ve already made. By default, a new Adjustment layer will have a white window but for this effect to work properly, simply fill the canvas with white while the mask is selected. Grab a Round brush and set the Brush Opacity to 20% and set your foreground color to white. Vary between brush sizes and brush over the area as many times you think is necessary. You should brush over the area shown in red below.
Step 36
The images all have a bit of hard line around them because we’ve used the Pen tool (P) but you can get rid of this but using the Blur tool (R) on the Layer mask.
Step 37
Repeat steps 31, 33, 34, 35 and 36 for the knights on the right and left but hopefully at this point of the tutorial, you will implement some of your own color variations and techniques. Get rid of what you like or add something else of what you think benefits the composition. At this point I have added a few more Color Balance Adjustment layers to all three knights and did more tweaking and this is my result at this point of the tutorial:
Step 38
At this point I’ve added a Color Balance Adjustment layer with the following settings:
I’ve also added a Color Fill Adjustment layer (#004762) at the top of all the layers to get a good idea of where I’m headed with this poster. Order of layers:
