ooking for tips or guidance for creating a poster

[JeffreyW]

I am looking to create a 24x36 poster in PS for my daughter in which I want to paint around 5 Les Paul guitars (all different colors) with guitar tabs for songs as the background. My question is how do I make sure I set the guitars at a proper image size that will scale to the poster size of 24x36?

I'm creating each Les Paul guitar as it's own layer and then placing the layers in the poster. Once I have them all set I'll them merge the layers for printing. I just want to make sure the guitars are at the proper image size within the poster (not too big and more importantly, not too small).

I would appreciate any feedback.

Thx,

Jeff

[JeffreyW]

Here's the mock up. Two things to note:

1) I didn't cut the guitars out yet as they still have their white background (but for the final poster I will cut the guitars out of their background)

2) I sized the 'Whole Lotta Love' tab to 200% x 200%. Obviously when I cut the guitars out from their background more of the tab will show

Quick question - when I have the final design, should I merge all layers and flatten?

Thx again

[Trevor.Dennis · Accepted solution]

JeffreyW wrote:

Quick question - when I have the final design, should I merge all layers and flatten?

Thx again

Definitely not.  Leave all layers intact, and export to PDF using the High Quality Print preset.  I am not going to say much about colour as it is not my area of expertise.  I give my artwork to a friend printer as sRGB, and he converts to CMYK and does a test print for me.

Some points:

The white backgrounds are incredibly easy to remove just using the Magic wand, which is all I used for my post #18.

The sheet music gives you a lot of possibilities being black on white.  You could overlay multiple layers all with their blend mode set to Darken, and the white would be transparent, like this

You could chose to distort the music over the guitars using a displacement map.  This is VERY quick and dirty, but gives you the idea

The bottom line is you dream it up, and if it is doable, we'll tell you how.

[Trevor.Dennis]

I 'love' this picture of PT.  Only 822x1024 but it might work stretched as a faded background.

[JeffreyW]

I did download that pic as well (plus about 10 others) - what a great shot! Seems like there's infinite options with pictures to create, which is both awesome and intimidating at the same time. I foresee various iterations of this poster.

Would've love to see The Who in their prime as to me there's never been a band more powerful live, and I've only seen videos!

[Trevor.Dennis]

JeffreyW wrote:

Would've love to see The Who in their prime as to me there's never been a band more powerful live, and I've only seen videos!

They actually turned up and gigged at the local tech college bar in the mid to late sixties.  This was in Southend-on-Sea in Essex.  It was early days for them, but we certainly knew who they were and couldn't believe our luck.  It was not planed or advertized, and I don't know to this day how it happened.  World class gigs is one of the things I miss the most after moving to New Zealand.

The best way to learn Photoshop is by need and required skills.  Like I said back up the thread.  You have to dream up a look, or see something you'd like to emulate, and then work out how to do it.  One of the reasons I post here is that we see questions on how to do stuff that we don't know the answers to.  We then work it out, and practice and swap ideas with each other, and we all come out of it with a few more tips and tricks.  It's win win for all of us.

I like Deke McClelland on Lynda because he seems to have total knowledge on the apps he teaches.  That tells you how to use the tools and features, and then we turn to the likes of Bert Monroy and Steve Caplin to learn how to put it use.  There is always more to learn.  I assisted Bert Monroy at MAX this year and was just a bit awe struck by him, but he was such a nice person, and I came away with a couple more little workflow tips.  I've been doing nothing but digital portraits since getting back, while this first one of my wife  took the best part of a month, I am getting much quicker now, and always learning.  It is infinitely more rewarding than tarting up a few photographs.

Try to find inspiration, and then try to emulate it yourself.  You'll continuously reinforce the skills that you actually need, without wasting time to learn things you might never use again.  When I teach Photoshop, I always tell people that you don't need to learn it all at once.  That's impossible.

[JeffreyW]

Thx again as the images you posted are awesome. Love the variation and endless possibilities. Feel like I'm going down a rabbit hole with this, but in a good way.

Thx for the heads up on not merging all layers and exporting to PDF using the High Quality Print preset.

I can't thank you enough for taking the time to provide feedback/tips/tricks/how to information. I've been watching a ton of video on Lynda.com about PS trying to learn as much as I can, and combined with the replies I've gotten here I'm starting to feel like I'm increasing my .00001% knowledge of PS!

[JeffreyW]

Second mock up as I changed the layout of the guitars:

Was thinking perhaps an inside black border would be good. Looks to plain without one.

Thx

[JeffreyW]

Third mock up with Pete Townshend as the background with opacity lowered. If I wanted to set Pete as a silhouette, should I use the pen tool on his image first and then bring him over, or is there an alternative way to create a silhouette? The photo I found of him is in black and white.