Make a Russian Propaganda Poster in Photoshop

Last week I did a tutorial on how to create a WWII propaganda poster in Photoshop. This week I thought I would do a similar tutorial, but on the flip side. This weeks tutorial is fairly similar to last weeks, but rather than create a patriotic poster, we are going to create a communist style propaganda poster. This one is a little bit easier than last weeks and should be a fun little project for those who wish to try it out.

Step 1

Create a new document with the following settings: 8×10 and 72dpi.

Step 2

Find a nice wrinkled paper background to use as the surface for your poster. I used this stock photo from Shutterstock, but there are plenty of free images just like it.

The image was a bit to orange, so I adjusted the images hue and saturation to lighten it up a bit.

Step 4

Find a picture of a soldier that you want to add to your poster. Cut away any background from the picture and paste the image on top of your paper layer.

I am using this image from Shutterstock.

Step 5

Next you will need to desaturate the image. To do this, go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate

Step 6

To give this photo more of a vintage poster look, we are going to apply a Poster Edges Filter to it.

Step 7

Create a red box behind the layer your soldier is on. To help it blend with the paper better, set the layers blending options to Multiply

Step 8

Now we can start adding some text. It seems like most of the poster of this style have a line of giant text running the length of the poster. Think of something clever for your poster.

I used the Soviet font from dafont.com

Step 9

With the text layer you just created selected, change the Blending Options to Color Dodge.

Step 10

Add some more text to your poster.

Step 11

I added a 3px white stroke around the text that lays on top of the red banner to help make it stand out.

Step 12

Using the rectangle tool, I created some stripes to add a little character to the poster.

Step 13

The poster looked like it needed a touch more color, so I drew a white rectangle above and below the the red stripe.

Step 14

To give the poster that grainy shadow look that so many of these types of posters have I added a Inner Shadow to the white rectangles we just created.

Open the Layer FX box and set the Inner Shadow to the following settings:

Final Image